What the Flip in Dead Space
by ZwIcK
Summary: Dead Space goes crazy. -Er.
1. Chapter 1

**~I wish more people would have tried to warp this game for 'humorous' purposes, so I'm going to give it a try for myself. Just a note, this starts at the end of the first game and will gradually bleed into the second one, so if it looks outdated no worries. We all know I own nothing.~**

It's been about six days since the ultimate destruction of Aegis 7, and Isaac is still hovering around deep space in the executive shuttle. Needless to say things are really 'off' in that cramped little space. Currently we join the engineer as he scribbles furiously (as usual) in his journal, or as he calls it, 'the Memoirs of his Sanity'...

"-and I still haven't gotten over that damned Kendra's shit, I swear she got off lucky when that stupid 'mega-morph' got her, I mean it I was about to rip off her arms and slap the hell out of her with her own appendages. Wonder if she was wearing any rings, preferably those really big grandma-rings, heheh those things hurt like hell. Unless they're those big cheap plastic ones. My grandma liked those. I doubt they would hurt, maybe sting but not really hurt... oh well it doesn't matter, although now I think about it if that planet were still intact I'd drive down there right now and-"

His ramblings are cut short as suddenly there's a small burst of static from the comms reciever. Or at least, he thinks there is. Sure enough though, a thrill of excitement floods through him as another burst of static comes through. Someone's finally picked up his signal! Diving from the small bench like a man possessed, he dashes to the reciever and starts to try to communicate to the other party.

"This is Isaac Clarke, surviving engineer of the USG Ishimura, come in third party, come in-"

Through the static, there comes a voice...

"ksshhhhttt...iss-clar-?kkkkkkksssssshtttt!"

He repeats his message once, then twice, with only static on the other end of the reciever. Just when he starts to panic that the reciever might be failing, the voice returns, (unfourtunately) much clearer this time...

"Issac? Make...us...whole...again..."

Fuming, he roars into the reciever:

"Dammit woman what part dont you get? WE...WILL...NEVER...BE...WHOLE! EVER! Now get the hell off this reciever!"

She starts to speak again but he quickly shuts her down and storms off to write down more furious nonsense in his book.

Meanwhile...

"Um, sir? What the hell do you make of that?" a young man turns from the ship's comm to give his captain a confused look. His captain just sighs heavily and shakes his head.

"They don't pay me nearly enough for this shit." He says dryly.

"So what do we do?" the young man presses.

"Are you kidding me? We pass this prick up and let some other weirdo get him. I mean, really, does he sound sane to you?"

"um..."

"Alright then."

So salvation passes up the nutter in the exec. shuttle. And yet, onboard said shuttle, Issac's 'musings' are interupted yet again, this time by a soft shuffling sound just beyond the wall. The sound is so low, only a person who has spent way too much time alone in their surroundings would have heard it, hence why Issac picked up on it so well. Sighing irritably, he sets the book and pen down yet again and goes over to the side of the room, to a slightly bent-up steel pipe he's been making use of lately. Ever since that time Nicole pounced on him, he's been careful not to over-use his prize plasma cutter. That and using the lead pipe efficiently requires a little bit more 'finesse'; in effect it keeps him in shape. That being said, he stations himself beside the well-worn vent and waits.

Sure enough, not a moment later and the expected necromorph (a slasher) dives out of the gaping hole in the wall, only to get cracked hard in the back of it's head region by the crazed engineer. It howls out in what one might refer to as 'pain', and whirls to face him, only to get cracked again, this time in the side. A few more well-aimed blows later and the now very beat-up slasher is scrambling to try to drag itself back to the vent, but hell if Issac isn't done. Sparing his trusty pipe from further abuse, he goes ahead and grabs up the leg he stomped off his adversary and proceeds to beat him with it, yelling all manner of various bullshit. The slasher manages to get into the vent almost enough to escape, but not before losing another leg to the maniac before finally falling down into the depths of the ventilation system. Not quite done with his would-be attacker, Issac sticks his head in the vent and hollers down "Yeah! Try walking now, prick!" before dumping the dismembered legs down the vent after their owner. If the creature had any manners left, it would take those things out of there before the whole place started to reek like death...more so than it already did. Feeling slightly better, Issac goes about busying himself with the small fridge in the one sector of the vessel. There was hardly any food worth talking about, but the stash of alcohol was just enough to sustain someone struggling with their own sanity for about a month. Lucky for him, right?

Down in the cargo hold of the shuttle, however, the story is a 'little' different...

In the mediocre space that they have (it's certainly no Ishimura, but it works for the moment), a female necromorph stands at a poor excuse for a podium, addressing her rag-tag group of stow-aways, mostly slashers. She's quite different from her following, as she retains more of a human-form, but of course it's because she's...

"-wait a minute, where's Fred?" she snaps, scanning the crowd. One slasher raises a scythed hand and quickly explains, as best it can through all the drooling, "He went up to try to bring The Master to his senses. I take it by his prolonged absense that he failed in doing so."

"Ugh," the necromorph at the podium sighs. "Don't you people pay ANY attention? I tell you guys NOT to go up there through the vents, but do any of you listen?"

"Hey, woman that's a harder habit to break than you know!" another slasher snaps. "It's like kicking lurkers, you just get addicted and next thing you know-"

The slasher cuts off in favor of booting the nearest lurker across the room, where it smacks hard into the adjacent wall and sticks a moment before peeling off.

"What the-WHY the hell did you do that?" the necro at the podium yells.

The slasher shrugs as the others snigger, or at least make noises reminiscent of sniggering. "I told you it's a hard habit to break, courtesy of course of the Master."

The necro at the podium is not amused. "The 'Master' isn't even one of us. Why the hell would you go abusing your brethren in honor of-?"

"Oh, come on! No one likes those little shits anyway!" Yet another of the congregation pipes up, interupting her. This one happens to be a leaper. The others (not lurkers) seem to agree.

"It's the point!" The leader yells over all the sudden noise.

"Hey look! It's Fred!" cries a divider. Due to it's insane height it's able to see over the congregation to take notice of the battered Fred, returned from his ordeal. The others fall silent at once, all trying to sync up their thoughs with his. Needless to say, this sucks for Fred, whose head hurts like hell already.

"Dammit! Why can't I just EXPLAIN it to you guys? I mean damn, didn't the Hive Mind teach you anything about MANNERS? Or privacy? Or just some common effing courtesy?" Fred shrieks.

The others immediately withdraw their thoughts, and someone growls darkly something to the effect of, "-told you guys convergence was a lame idea..."

"You creatures are so negative." the leader grumbles, scowling at the others. Eventually Fred gets to tell of the horrible beating he endured at the hands of 'the Master', to which case the others all seem sympathetic. Then, ineviatbly, they all turn their attention to she who by now fell asleep at the podium.

"Ah hell, what was her name again?"

"Wasn't it something about 'stars'?"

"Bring up that song one more time and so help me-"

"No wait! It was, um, shit...hold on..."

"-Lenny!"

"You ass! I'M Lenny!"

"Oh! THERE you are! You dick, I've been looking for you since yesterday!"

"Hey! Hey, I think I got it-!"

"Ah the hell with names! I say we just hit her with something!"

"Great! Here, take my arm!"

"Perfect! -wait, how the hell do I go about this...?"

"No really! I think I got it! Her name's 'Ni-!"

"AHA! I got it!"

"FIRE!"

Next second the 'arm' thrown at her thoks her dead in the forehead and drops her like a sack of decrepit potatoes. As the others congradulate a job well done, a very irritated Nicole gets up from the floor, and treats them all to the wrath of her high-pitched and extrememly annoying vocal cords, as an unholy shriek is unleahed from her maw-

(upstairs)

"-stupid bitch is singing again..." Issac growls, continuing his game of solitare unfazed. (He's clearly heard this way too many times by now to care.)

Back in the cargo hold...

"WHY do you DO that?" a slasher, this one wearing the tattered remains of a lab coat, howls out.

"Because...it's like, my thing." Nicole says soflty, zoning out momentarily before snapping back out of it. "And anyway, do you have any IDEA how bad that hurt?" To emphasize this, she reaches up and yanks the blade-arm from her forehead, causing blood to gush out for a moment in a hefty stream before peetering out.

"Woman, seriously? We're already dead. We don't feel that much to begin with. Get over it."

"Hey, you speak for yourself over there!" the necro known as Fred growls.

"He's got a point. Those gravity boots hurt like the dickens." chirps up one of the small necromorphs holding together the divider's left leg.

"Bob!" the divider's head snaps. "What did I tell you about your opinions?"

"Uh, something to the effect of, 'They're like pissing in a vaccuum'?"

"Exactly! -Well not quite, but I guess it works-"

"Something tells me this is going to take forever..." Nicole growls to herself. These things have been falling apart ever since the destruction of the planet, and the Hive Mind along with it. Little did they know, their real master was with them all along...and deeply considering just how stupid each one of them was individually, of course, it can only get better from there...


	2. Chapter 2

**~Wow! I'm amazed that people actually liked this! I appreciate the reviews, favs, etc. so far, and can only hope this chapter is up to scratch so as not to disappoint! :) ~**

Roughly thirty-six hours have passed since last we saw Isaac, and nothing has come over the comms reciever, not even Nicole. So Isaac's sitting at the control panel (where he's been most of this time), debating whether or not to try to find some civilization. Twenty minutes later and he's (still) staring hard at the controls like as if they'll just up and decide for him. Needless to say, they don't, and another odd lapse of time goes by when-

CLANG!

Isaac jolts out of his stupor and whirls around, aiming his plasma cutter straight behind him with such intensity that it takes a moment before he realizes that...he's not armed. He's actually just holding his hands in the way of a gun and pointing at an empty booze bottle that -somehow- dropped to the floor. Well, at least there was nothing there. He'd really hate for those things living in the cargo hold to get the impression that he was losing his mind. Then again, though, they _can_ sneak through the walls...what if one was watching him...right now...

"Heheh, gotcha, didn't I?" he says loudly, forcing a laugh that comes out only a little too dry. "You creatures just think I'm losing my mind, eh? I'll show you...I'll show all of you! I can resist your villainous Marker! -Ah hell where's Pi?" he adds irritably, hunting around for the ever-popular "Memoirs" notebook (that by now is just shy of being a novel) that he could've sworn he'd put in the co-pilot's seat. After all, somebody's got to sit there, and being as he's started reffering to the notebook as 'Pi' (pronounced as 'pea'), there you go. But Pi seems to have moved on, much to his owner's disapproval. "Dammit, Pi, this isn't funny! You know I don't like 'Hide and Seek'!"

Just as he's about to commence his search, however, Isaac goes rigid, sensing something just behind him. Slowly, he turns in his seat, only to come face-to-face with none other than...

"-I think I make a much better co-pilot, don't you?"

"YOU!" bellows Isaac.

And there they sit, Isaac and his now very-much deceased lover, er, former lover, facing each other. No words are spoken, but after a while-

"OW!" she cries, clapping a hand to her forehead.

"Get 'er, Marty!" Isaac then throws himself to the floor and army-crawls to the small table set more toward the back of the shuttle, taking refuge beneath it.

"What the-WHY did you throw your plasma cutter at me?"

"To conserve ammo!" he barks at her, brandishing a finger. "WHY were you sitting next to me?"

"Because you seemed lonely!"

"LIES!" he roars, still huddled under the table. "I know your ways! You wanted to attack me! Again!"

"Hey now," she says, her 'eyes' shifting in their sockets. "It's not exactly easy being a necromorph, you know. Sometimes I just get this...urge...and then next thing you know-"

"That's the same lame excuse you used when you were trying to explain that intern you were all over," Isaac growls. Nicole instantly gets defensive.

"Hey! Steve was shy, he just needed a little extra guidance and-!"

"Oh, and getting naked taught him what? Pretty sure he learned 'anatomy' long before he met you!"

"WHY are you being so disagreeable!" she shrieks. "Fine! Stay by yourself and wallow in your waning sanity! See if I care!"

Next thing you know, she scrambles into a vent and goes banging around through the walls, leaving Isaac to scold Marty (aka his plasma cutter) for being a hero. Back down in the cargo hold-

"Oh no, it's her," one of the necromorphs in the cargo hold breathes, listening to the sudden racket in the walls.

"Damn, and I was just starting to enjoy the peace and quiet too..." pouts another, hanging it's head sadly.

Sure enough, she comes lunging out of one of the many vents, only to go storming off to her podium. "Meeting!" she shrieks, and the horde at large groan in unison and 'converge' on the small meeting place. Now what?

"As you may well know," she starts, her tone one of ill-supressed frustration. "it's been almost eight days since the destruction of both the Hive Mind and the Marker, and-"

"-And you STILL haven't coughed up with those bibs you promised!" interrupts an 'enhanced' slasher, pointing a blade at her. At this, a murmur goes up through the crowd at large as they recall the promise that has yet to be kept. Nicole just stares blankly, completely at a loss.

"What the...when did I-?" she starts, but the slasher talks over her.

"You said when we first piled into this dump that you'd find us some bibs! I mean look at me!" To emphasize his point, he freezes, so that they can all clearly see the copious amounts of drool oozing from his mandible. The others seem to become a little self-concious after this, and more than one necromorph is to be seen hiding it's face a little. Nicole is still trying to figure out when the hell she said anything about bibs, but then it comes to her...

"Oh yeah..."

_FLASHBACK_

_"-so follow me and I shall lead you all into glorious convergence!" Nicole cries to the room at large. There's a pause that should (at least in her opinion) have been filled with the cheers of her necromorph following, but instead there's only silence. Confused, she looks down into the small mass, to see them all just staring back at her. Missed cue?_

_"Um...that's it." she finishes lamely. The others still just look on. Eventually in all the silence, a lone clinking sound is to be heard, from way in the back: one slasher is 'clapping' it's blades together, but stops quickly when it realizes it's the only one doing so. _

_"Don't any of you understand what I'm telling you?" Nicole asks._

_"What do we get out of all this?" someone yells up. _

_"What do you want?" Now she's really confused. They're not interested in convergence? Since when?_

_"Bibs!" another voice pipes up from the group. At this there's a mass of commotion. Nicole, at her podium, grins wickedly._

_"Just do as I say and you can have all the bibs you want!" She says to a wealth of cheers. "I'll even go so far as to get patterned ones!" The raucous celebratring gets so bad after those words that poor Isaac upstairs is about to have a stroke (you know how loud a divider can be normally...probably sounds to him like there's a pod of whales taken refuge down there, among other things)._

BACK TO THE PRESENT

"Okay, okay, fine," Nicole snaps impatiently, waving off the memory. "But that brings me back to the point I was trying to make: It's been eight days and we're _still floating around in space_!" that last part she says in a hiss.

"...I can live with that." someone pipes up nonchalantly.

"That's you. What about the rest?" the more human of their number narrows her otherwise-empty eyes.

"The Master seems fine with it." a voice calls out. An oddly familiar one...

"Wait a minute..._Steve?"_ Nicole gasps. Hearing it's name, a pregnant in the middle of the congregation perks up. "Yes?"

"Oh my..." She blushes furiously and lowers her head to look at the floor. "What're you doing here?" she mutters. Talk about embarrasing...

"NYAH! W-Where the hell did you come from? URGH-hairball!" chokes a highly amused exploder, which immediately has everyone edging away. "Haha-nyaaaaaah! What's the deal?"

"Huh...not too sure." The pregnant Steve says, glancing down at his swollen gut. "I suppose I always was a family man..."

Back upstairs, Isaac's still on his 'search and rescue' mission for the elusive Pi, when something suddenly occurs to him. "Wait a minute..." he says to himself. His thoughts (whatever they might be) are to be interrupted as-

BOOM!

The whole shuttle is rocked by some large-scale impact, sending it (and everything in it) pitching to one side. That being said...

"AH!" roar some of our decaying stow-aways as, as one, they all go toppling into the side wall. Above the result is similar, with Isaac being thrown into a storage compartment that, on impact, bursts open and showers the room (and the engineer) with all manner of papers, audio and data logs. The moment a disoriented Isaac gets up, the comms reciever comes alive with a transmission, in the form of:

"AGH! Dammit would you watch how the hell you're driving?" an angry male voice booms over the reciever.

"My apologies, sir. Continue with docking proceedure?" a second male voice replies.

"Yeah, yeah..." growls the first voice irritably.

"Proceeding with docking protocol." the second says, and the sounds of random goings-on can be heard in the background. Isaac's eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. There's someone here to rescue him!

"Attention thrid party!" yells the first guy into the reciever. "If there is anyone on board this ship, you have five minutes to respond before we-!"

At this, Isaac bolts over to the reciever and responds hurriedly. As he converses with this new person...

Onboard the second ship...

"They **still **don't pay me enough for this shit," the captain of the 'new' ship sighs, shaking his head as over the transmission, Isaac's on a tirade about how he's been trying to contact someone other than his dead girlfriend and that there's monsters living in the cargo hold and that he's been out here for oh, so long and blah, blah, blah-

"Alright!" the captain interrupts. "We're coming over to get you now. Make sure your suit is on properly and, uh, that type of thing." He cuts transmission and buries his face in his hands. "GOD this is going to be a loooooooong day...curse Tiedemann and his crazy schemes..."

On the shuttle, however, a shot of dread goes through Isaac. _They're coming to get me...now? _he thinks. _But I haven't found Pi!_ "Blast it, Pi, where are you?" he cries, taking to the search as he also preps his suit. Just as his helmet comes together, a banging is heard at the shuttle doors, and without Mr. Clarke's consent it's wrenched open by some outside party, plunging the room into a vacuum as two men in some really creepy-looking suits step in. Isaac can only stare as a strange voice is (somehow) heard.

"You the only one?" the voice says. It must be one of the new guys.

"No!" Isaac barks, causing the other two to exchange glances. One of them shrugs.

"That's not what we heard, but ok," he says. "We'll get them. Just follow-"

"I'm not leaving without Pi!" snaps the lone engineer, marching off into the one adjacent room on the shuttle and leaving the two rescuers in total confusion.

"Does he not realize you can't do that in a vacuum?" the one says. The other just shakes his head. Now they know what the captain said about there being a 'loon' in this shuttle. This guy's nuts...

"Look, buddy, you can just as well do that on our ship," the first man says patiently, taking a few steps after Isaac. "But right now, if you haven't noticed, we're in a vacuum and we've only got so much air in our RIGs. So if you would be so kind as to-"

"Not yet dammit!" yells Isaac, still rooting around distractedly. A minute of this later and the two men in the doorway are getting a little tired of the charade, and so opt to grab Isaac and steer him out of the shuttle, despite his insistant protests. Just as they get to the threshold, though, something catches Isaac's eye, and he wreches himself free for a minute in favor of-

"PI!" he cries, snagging the floating notebook from where it was hovering. Clutching said notebook close like it's his first-born son, he turns back to the other two, both of whom seem to have frozen in place (as you can imagine). "Ok, we can go now." he says brightly, and follows them onto the second ship. Once onboard...

"Right, wonderful," says the irritable captain, waving off the newcomer's arrival. "You!" he barks at one of the men that came in with Isaac. "Go put him in stasis until further notice." The man addressed then steers Isaac deeper into the vessel. Isaac, of course, is practically oblivious to this, mainly because he's just glad to be out of that cramped up shuttle. "Guess we're gonna be taking a nap," he says, flipping Pi open and scribbling in it. The guy with him just stares.

"You gave your notebook a name?" he asks quizically.

"Of course!" Isaac replies, still scratching away. "It's a helluva lot more endearing than calling it "the Memoirs of my Sanity!" he starts to laugh at the very thought, leaving the other guy to try and hide the sudden feeling that just crept up in his gut.

_Praise Altman for stasis, _he thinks to himself as they turn into the stasis room, _he really _is_ insane!_

_Such nice people on this ship, _Isaac jots into his trusty pal Pi. _Note to self however: be on the lookout for Unitologists. They're everywhere...just like my girlfriend..._

**~Just as a side note, this is my first time writing sci-fi so I'm hoping that that last part is -somewhat- believable. If not, eh, I tried.~**


	3. Chapter 3

**~I want you all to know, **** I deeply appreciate the reviews I get, as well as the fact that people have actually added this to their favs, alerts and what not!~**

**XxXxX**

**In between games 1 and 2 (and where our story currently falls), there are three years that aren't really accounted for. Or, at least, they weren't, until now...**

"How's the project coming along?" came Tiedemann's voice from behind, startling the two doctors he was addressing. The man on the left sounded, creeped, to say the least, when he spoke. "I-I don't, uh, really k-know, sir," he stammered. The man on the right just stood shaking his head in disbelief, at a complete loss for words. Narrowing his eyes, Tiedemann scowled through the viewing window...only to have the stern expression fade away almost immediately in favor of a, well...

_"May I?" he asked softly, extending a hand courteously to the pretty lady before him, a kind smile on his lips. She giggled shyly and took his hand in hers, allowing him to sweep her close, so that they were now in a light but firm embrace. Gazing down into those eyes, he could swear the very stars themselves shone behind them as they glittered up into his own. _

_"Oh, you," she chuckled as he held out her arm and began to lead. As they went, she pressed herself closer to him, immersing herself in his warmth, bathing in his radiating affection. He could be so graceful..._

Outside the one-way viewing window, Tiedemann looks like his brain just went on deep-fry. The look on his face (while in itself being truly priceless) is the kind of look that says 'FIRED' in big bold print (or caps lock) to the first doctor, the man on the left of the window. He can only look on nervously, sweating profusely and fighting a serious urge to just say 'fuck it all' and commit himself. His colleague is still practically in a standing-coma, his eyes glued to the spectacle before them, with disbelief etched all over his face as he continues to monotonously shake his head.

_"You're every bit as beautiful as I remember," he whispers to her, turning them again. She let her head loll back a moment as they went, and he stole the opportunity to brush his lips tenderly against the taut skin of her throat, eliciting a contented moan to escape her as she reveled in the moment. "I love you," she breathes, her voice only loud enough for him to hear. Him and him alone, they way it should've always been... "I always loved you..."_

"Is that a fucking _height scale?"_ blurts out Tiedemann incredulously, his face slack in utter disbelief. The near basket-case himself doctor whimpers and nods fervently, praying The Marker he won't be signing up for EarthGov Welfare later on today. Before them, one of the patients in the 'project' is...ballroom dancing...with a height scale. "And, which one is this?" Tiedemann points, as if he's the only one seeing this (bet he wishes he was).

"It's...patient four." The man on the right says, finally adding his two cents to this. Tiedemann can only stare and gape as patient four goes into a few more elaborate turns with the scale.

"And...are any of the others...?" Tiedemann starts, gesturing toward the window as words are clearly beyond him at the moment.

"No." the more calm of the two doctors says. "Although I _did_ catch patient five trying to lick the bulb in my desk lamp once, a session or two ago." He says this as if hoping it might justify what they're watching now. Tiedemann only nods dimly.

"That..." he says finally, as patient four twirls the height scale and goes into a dip with it, "...that, is just wrong..." There's something about the level of involvement patient four's exerting that just makes this much more disturbing than it might of otherwise been.

"Something tells me it can only get 'better' from here," sighs the man to the right. As if on cue...

"_I wish I could feel you, just one more time," he murmurs in her ear, nuzzling back her soft hair with his cheek. "I wish I could take a part of you within me, so I could hold on to you forever..." "Maybe you can," she cooed back, turning her head. Suddenly her lips were on his, those inviting lips-_

"AUGH! Wha-What the hell is that?" cries Tiedemann as patient four begins making out with the height scale.

The spazzing doctor looks somewhat depressed now. "OW!" he yelps suddenly as Tiedemann cuffs him hard in the back of the head. "Are you seeing this, man?" His boss snaps. (Please note, this isn't just your average 'make-out' session going on here. It's the kind of making out that most people only experience in their dreams, or see in movies, hence why...)

"Y-Yes I'm seeing it! How could you not!" whines the doctor in his own defense.

"...And?" Tiedemann's practically beside himself now. The doctor glumly hangs his head.

"I was just standing here wishing me and my wife had what this guy and that scale have," he says mournfully. Even the other doctor leans over Tiedemann's shoulder to stare at him.

"Don't go loose on me now, man." Tiedemann growls, giving him a rough shake. Hearing a stifled sniffle from behind him, he whirls to see some of the other viewing staff in tears and swapping boxes of tissues. If you didn't think his eyes could go any wider, you were wrong. They do, and his pupils dilate worse than ever.

"It's just so beautiful..." sniffles a nurse, blowing her nose loudly. "I wish I had what they have..."

"ARE YOU ALL INSANE?" roars Tiedemann.

"You're the one that wanted him in the program," shrugs the doctor to his right. "I, myself, am starting to wonder if the Marker alone led to _this._" Tiedemann's two seconds from storming out of the room when...

_She drew away from him, and despite his best efforts to keep her, she still disengaged from their kiss. A pang of sorrow stung his heart as the thought that this may be their last time struck him. He continued to peck around the corners of her mouth, but then she said the one thing that could shatter the mood, that could make all that they'd just shared evaporate like it were nothing more than an amoeba in a decontamination chamber..._

"_Isaac, please...Make. Us. Whole-!"_

"NO!" roared patient four suddenly, so loudly that his viewers (that he knew nothing of) could hear him through the re-enforced glass. Before they knew how to react, patient four shoved the height scale roughly away from him.

_He pushed her away, and she recoiled like an angry animal, catching herself and suddenly rebounding on him and knocking him to the floor. "WHY NOT?" she shrieked in his face, instantly having gone from the woman he'd once loved to the dead re-animated puppet of the Marker he knew from his time on the shuttle. Damn was she strong! He had to get her off...!_

As they watched, the height scale teetered back on its stand, and as it came back up to right itself it came up too hard and knocked patient four to the ground, where he lay thrashing around with it on top of him. "I knew it was too good to last!" cries one of the male nurses as a few of them rush in to liberate the loon in the viewing room of his current 'situation'. As a whole new drama began to play out, Tiedemann let himself out, in serious need of a cup of coffee and a strong aspirin. Somehow, seeing that was unsettling. Not only did it give him the notion that patient four was going to be a real pain, but it also made him seriously wonder what that scale had that he didn't...

**Later that day...**

Patient four was safely strapped down to his bed, waiting to be put into stasis until his next 'session'. As he waited for the technician to come in and put him under, he found himself staring determinedly up at the ceiling. He could see her out of the very corner of his eye, and he refused to look at her.

"Isaac, please..." she begged.

"No." he said flatly.

"Why not?"

"..."

"...Isaac? Why? Why won't you look at me?"

"...You got me in trouble."

**Later still...**

"Damn, must you be so pushy?" scoffs Fred as Nicole returns into the deepest depths of their new 'home', which really isn't so 'new' at all...

**~Uh-oh, Isaac's entourage followed him to the Sprawl...as you knew they would. I tried to make it a little more 'vivid' in places to try to replicate how real his hallucinations are to him...here's hoping it wasn't a total flop?~**


	4. Chapter 4

**~I apologize for those last two chapters. They tanked. If you read them, I apologize. If you didn't then you aren't missing anything. My remedy was to get rid of them, and I doubt they'll be missed. Well anyway, here's the prelude to the 'group therapy' chapter, altered but (hopefully) better.**

**P.S.-Hehe, a friend gave me the idea for the joke here, so this time if the chapter sucks it's not my fault! -entirely. :P I do have permision to use said joke, so go from there. Enjoy?~**

**Three months after (last chapter)...**

The doctors decided to try something new with the patients. Something that might possibly serve to illicit some sort of reaction from even just one of them that might further their research into the Marker.

Group 'therapy'.

"So long as I don't have to be there for it," Tiedemann had said as he signed the order of permission that was needed to mark that yes, the staff had asked him for the go-ahead and that yes, he had given it.

Arrangements were then hastily made so that the doctors could bear witness to what they hoped would be a success.

Of course, this is Dead Space we're talking about. Shame they weren't informed, or they probably wouldn't have wasted their time with such an endeavor...

XXX

Something was happening, he could tell. The very air itself seemed...different, somehow. Indeed, the nurse that came in to give him his pills only further confirmed his suspicions: her whole demeanor seemed 'off'. He tried to make eye contact with her but failed miserably to do so. Needless to say, this did not serve to 'please' the viewing audience.

"See something you like?" grumbled Nicole from the opposite wall, her arms folded moodily across her chest.

Isaac ignored her and continued to watch the nurse as she replaced the cap on the pill bottle and eventually took her -rather hurried- leave. Only after the door had slid firmly back in place did he turn to address the (jealous) phantasm across from him.

"Did she seem -odd- to you, just now?" he asks of her.

"-About as odd as every other slut in this hell-hole." Nicole muttered darkly in response, determindly keeping her eyes fixed on the door.

"Nicole." Isaac's not in time for jealous-dead-girlfriend shenanigans. This could be serious.

"Who?" she says instead, casting her sights around mockingly.

"Dammit woman! This could be serious!" he snaps, needlessly reiterating what the author just wrote.

"I'll say!" she snaps back, rounding on him with her usual (quite literally) deadened stare. If this bothers him in any way, however, the deadpan expression on his face certainly hides it well.

"God, you always were touchy about the dumbest shit-" he sighs heavily, shaking his head.

"I can't help it," she suddenly simpers, rubbing her arm in an 'insecure' manner. "What with being 'dead' and all-"

"-Aaaaaaaaaannndd here it starts," the engineer mutters into his hands as she continues on about 'he-stopped-caring-what'.

Some few minutes (and much whining) later and Isaac is cut off from further pondering with his former lover as a small huddle of male nurses enter his room. The one at the head of the group is holding a noticably large syringe, which can't mean anything good. Nicole instantly silences herself in favor of watching.

"PLEASE for the love of Altman tell me I'm not going to need this," the first man says unexpectedly, his tone one of exasperation.

Isaac stares from the needle to the man weilding it and back again before shaking his head. "Not that I'm aware of?"

"You didn't even explain why you might need it in the first place!" pipes up one of the back-up nurses, elbowing his colleague.

"Nah, it's all in the display," the leader says 'wisely', nodding to emphasize his point. "Isn't that right, Patient Four?"

"Whatever you say, buddy," Isaac agrees, hoping he won't wind up on the business end of that needle if he can avoid it. It looks mean...

"Alright then, you guys escort him to the 'room'." the leader instructs. "I'm going to go try and make Patient Two 'agreeable'..."

He bustles out, and the other two men flank Isaac and proceed to lead him from the room. Curious, Nicole peeks around the door to watch him go until he and his 'entourage' have completly vanished from view. Rather than opt to follow, though, she stays behind. She has 'other' things to check on first...

XXX

Isaac found himself sitting in a large, glaringly-white circular room, alone despite the small assortment of chairs radiating around his own. He felt a random and otherwise-involuntary tingle of apprehension dash down his spine; this sort of thing had never happened before, and right now he didn't like it. He wished Nicole was here, so that he'd have someone to talk to while he waited, but knowing her, she was probably probing the halls for that nurse from before...

So he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Gradually, the silence mounted until his ears ached, as if the room had just been plunged into a vacuum that solely targeted sound.

Nothing.

Not.

One.

Sound.

His body began to break out in a cold sweat and his breath came in sharp bursts that caught in his throat. His pulse quickened to such a degree that it hurt, and that was when...

He heard it.

A shallow wheezing, coming from somewhere...but where? He wished Marty were here, Marty would protect him. At the thought, his trigger finger began to twitch out of habitual reflex, but he wasn't aware of it. His eyes were roving the room, looking for the source, the entry point-

There, set in the far wall: a vent.

Oh dear God.

He got up slowly and backed away, putting as much space between it and himself as possible. The more he stared into the inky black depths beyond that flimsy steel grate, the more it came into focus: it's jaw drooping and slick with saliva, it's deadened eyes fixed on him...

XXX

"AH!" he screamed as the door to the room slid open. A confused doctor (recognized soon after to be the doctor that had threatened him with the needle some time earlier) peered around the corner, his expression one of nervous apprehension.

"Patient...Four?" he asked softly. "Patient Four, are you alright?" Behind his back, he quickly made some signaling gesture to whoever was behind him. This didn't look good...

"Isaac?" he pressed gently. Isaac's eyes stopped darting about the room and fixed so intently on his own that he felt his heart jolt. "...you ok?"

The engineer was silent a moment. After what seemed like forever, he nodded. "Y-Yeah," he said distantly. "I-I just...I just-"

"It's ok, Isaac," the doctor continued, edging into the room, wary of making any sudden movements that might illicit an attack. These people were prone to that sort of thing, after all. "You can relax. Easy, now. There, there..." he cooed. Before him, Patient Four seemed to be easing up some, which was good. He was not bound by a straightjacket, after all.

"...Why are you against the wall, Isaac?" the doctor asked. At first Isaac only shook his head, but he was acutely aware that the doctor was staring at him; he could feel it. Feeling somewhat pressured, he finally sighed.

"The vent...it, it was in the vent..." he pointed a slightly-shaking finger. The doctor turned to the offending vent himself, and squinted through the shadowy bars.

"I don't see anything, Isaac." he intoned patiently.

"I know it was there. It might have you fooled, but not me." the engineer countered, scowling.

The doctor smiled, that same fake smile that all doctors' use. You know, the one generally followed by that bullshit 'now you're going to feel a slight pinch' line. "I'm going to show you there's nothing there," he said calmly.

"Are you insane?" Patient Four looked incredulous.

"Not quite," the doctor said, that same weird smile on his face. With that, he got up and crossed the room, positioning himself dead in front of the vent. Isaac felt dread course through him as suddenly as if a dam had just burst within him, releasing a torrent of icy water into his veins. He'd seen this one too many times...

XXX

_Two minutes prior..._

"Awl, shit," cursed the very-real leaper that had honestly been hiding in the vent, spying on 'the Master.' As quietly as was necromorphically-possible, it backed itself out and shimmied into the opening of another route of ventilation, wedging itself out of sight just as the doctor stood before the grate it'd been at just a second ago.

XXX

"See?" the doctor said, turning to Isaac, who still looked extremely leery. "Nothing. Nothing at a- wait." he stopped suddenly. Turning back to the vent, he paused a moment, then cried out so sharply that Isaac jumped.

"AUGH! What the hell?" he snapped. Then, and rather unexpectedly: "It smells like something DIED in here! OH that is foul-!"

XXX

"_What the...HEY!" _the leaper lurking in the vent snapped mentally, baring it's needle-like fangs and hissing.

XXX

"Excuse me just a moment," the doctor said shortly to Isaac before storming from the room. The door had barley slid shut behind him before his irritable ranting was to be heard.

"Nurse? NURSE! Yes, you!"

"Is this about the-" a startled female voice answered.

"No, no. The Patient is fine, so far as that goes. No, I need you to go down into the mailroom, you know where that is? Good. I need you to go down there and tell those pogues to STOP, er, 'flatulating', into the vents! Dammit these people are scewed up enough as it is, WITHOUT a bunch of idiots lighting off anal gas into the ventilation!"

The 'nurse' chortled slightly. "Oh, they're still doing that?"

The doctor didn't seem to find the situation so funny. "Clearly."

"I-I'll tell them," she obliged. The sound of hurried footsteps told of her quick departure. That random episode aside, the doctor re-entered, looking thoroughly miffed.

"Now I know _why_ I keep hearing about zombie-like monsters in the vents..." he grumbles to himself. "Only thing decaying in those things is someone's _ass..."_

"Doc?" Isaac starts. "Doctor, that was no-"

"Of course not," the doctor waves that one right off. "Now, are you feeling up to par?"

"For, what?"

"Anything."

"Um, sure?"

"Lovely. You're going to be joined by a few of the other patients, is that alright with you?"

"I don't really have a choice, right?"

"Of course you don't, it just sounds proper to ask. Alright then," he pulls up the audio on his RIG. "Bring in the other two."

XXX

Shortly afterward, the door slides open again, and five men walk in: three heavy-set male nurses, and two others that Isaac doesn't know at all. By their dress, they can't be nurses, or even orderlies. In fact, they're dressed much like him...

The first one is led in by the arm by one of the nurses, who guides him over to the chair furthest from Isaac, who has since settled himself back into the seat he'd had before. He's of a fairly average build; bit of a square jaw, hair just a tad longer than Isaac's, not really much else. Judging from the glassy look in his eyes and his 'way-too-calm' demeanor, he's under the influence of some seriously heavy drugs. Clearly a shady guy, not to mention an easily forgettable one.

The second man enters of his own accord, not having to be led in like the creep before him. He seems tense to quite some degree, and takes the first seat he comes to. From there he opts to stare intently at the floor, with his hands clasped in his lap. He's rocking back and forth just slightly and tapping one foot nervously on the floor...the poor, weird, jittery bastard...

"Good, good," the doctor beams at the three men seated around him. "-Is this all so far?" he asks of one of the nurses. They discuss something quickly before the doctor nods. "Mmhm... Ok! You three! I've got to go see to the others just yet, so I'll be gone a few minutes. During that time, you're more than welcome to get to know each other! In fact, I encourage it!" He then sweeps himself out, the entourage of nurses behind him.

XXX

"'Kay, let's see how things go thus far..." the doctor says distractedly, setting up still more monitors and what not. Behind him, the rest of the viewing stafff are still edging into the room to behold this little 'experiment'.

Hopefully, they're about to witness a success.

Likely, they're going to see instead an epic failure.

"Nonsense," chides the doctor when one of the nurses brings up this possibility to him. "We've been preparing for this for-!"

"-About twelve hours," scoffs the critic nurse. The doctor goess rigid a moment, realizing the other does in fact have a point.

"Um...shut up," he says quickly, finishing up his doings. "Alright people!" he addresses all else in the room, while the nurse beside him clicks her tongue disaprovingly. "It's show time!"

**~Another P.S.: I appreciate all the reviews, favs, etc's, I really do. :3 You guys are awesome!~**


	5. Chapter 5

**~Alas! My contribution to Halloween! It was either this or terrorizing small children...the latter of which I did anyway.~**

Twenty minutes of pure boredom. Not a damn thing was going on in that room, not one! He tapped his pen dully on the desk, waiting. Behind him, his colleagues seemed to think this was fucking naptime, judging by the soft sounds of snoring that occasionally reached his ears.

God, watching holographic flies fuck would be more enjoyable than watching these guys! Apparently they were at their most docile when near others of the same 'lunatic' species.

That, and when they were _encouraged _to be their usual, crazy-ass selves.

_Maybe if Tiedemann were here...weird shit practically _revolves _around that man..._

Ugh, time to up the stakes on this one. The room's control board was right in front of him, after all. His eyes fell to the lighting switch and a devious grin cracked over his face. Hmm...wonder what would happen if he did, oh, say..._this?_

* * *

><p>Nothing was happening. The other patients were keeping to themselves just as much as he was.<p>

Apparently none of them was much for social situations.

At this rate they'd get along just fine.

Isaac sighed and leaned back in his seat. As he did so, he noticed one of the ceiling lights start to flicker.

_Go figure..._

Then the others started to as well, before suddenly all shutting down at once, plunging the room into a state of total darkness. He held his breath for a second as his heart began to race, listening hard...before jolting out of his chair at the piercing, girly shriek of one of the other patients...

And then the lights came back on...except that they were _orange_. A hazy, dark, reddish-orange...

He was clambering back into his seat, muttering something about a bruised ass...when _they _came.

* * *

><p>All the chairs in the room were suddenly full of people. The other two patients were still there, too, but all of them -everyone- was covered in blood. No one moved. He'd seen this sort of thing one too many times to not know what he was seeing now, and he had to admit that it still wasn't impressing him.<p>

They were dead.

They were all dead.

He felt suddenly rooted to the spot, however, as they all turned slowly, deliberately, to face him. Their eyes snapped open, and he only slightly jumped (but jumped all the same) as he saw that not one of them actually had eyes; only empty, sightless sockets.

Again, go figure.

Also: not good.

They were all 'staring' at him, all of them, through those deep black holes in their skulls. And they were whispering, though their mouths never moved. What they were saying he neither knew or cared, but occasionally legible snippets came to him as he backed away and began scouting for something heavy.

"_Isaac..."_

_"...they're coming..."_

_"-calling..."_

_"...it's just the beggining..."_

_"-help me...find me..."_

_"-give purpose to the emptiness..."_

_"-they're looking to you now..."_

_"The Marker..."_

_"...liar..."_

_"-lead..."_

_"-Isaac..."_

_"Master..."_

_"-pancakes..."_

"AAAAAHHHHH!"

* * *

><p>Nobody was talking to him, or for that matter talking at all. Which was good, in a way. They certainly weren't yelling.<p>

Alexis was always yelling.

But she wasn't here right now. That was good. He wished she'd stop yelling at him, about such strange things, too. He'd never hurt her, or their son; she of all people should know that. But she always told him he had; he did.

She was dead, she told him. She and their son were dead.

She told him he'd killed them. That he was a sick, sadistic murderer.

But he wasn't!

The _monsters_ had taken them away.

He was not a monster.

He was a scientist, a husband, a father...not a monster. Not like those, _things. _

Never!

He was convinced she was trying to turn their son away from him, too. Sometimes he'd make such outlandish remarks, like 'Why, Daddy? Mommy says you hurt us...' 'Mommy said you're the reason we're not together anymore, Daddy.' 'Don't you love me anymore, Daddy?'

'Of course, son. I'll always love you...!'

'_Then why am I DEAD, Daddy?'_

Sometimes he could be harsh, too. He supposed that was what happened when one parent told you the other was scum all the time. He was with her so much anymore, no wonder he got a little hostile every now and then. Generally, though, he tried to understand his father. Most unlike his mother.

Such a good little boy...

"AAAAAHHHHH!"

_Oh God she's back!_

* * *

><p><em>Don't be afraid, Isaac, <em>her voice rang out from somewhere. _They won't hurt you...they're dead, after all. YOU killed them._

"I think I'd recognize my own handiwork," he growled irritably. That voice sounded familiar...and not in a good way.

It certainly wasn't Nicole.

_Liar..._her voice said in a song-like, tauntingly-melodious tone. _You killed them, you killed them, you killed them..._

"Bullshit! They still have all their limbs!" he snapped, gesturing toward the obvious. He'd never killed anybody, only those things- the necromorphs- not people!

-Unfourtunately. This voice definitely sounded like it belonged to somebody from the lengthy list of people he _wished _he'd killed...

Those in the chairs began to change, now, as the voice chanted over and over that he'd killed them. Some went rigid in their seats, some pitched forward, ALL began to change grotesquely before his very eyes. Appendages that no human should ever bear erupted from their backs, their jaws broke apart, their necks elongated as muscles that needn't be forced them higher from their bodies...

Blood showered the once-white floors as they became the very stuff of nightmares, of _his _nightmares...

_Ah hell... _his eyes continued roving the room for anything he could possibly defend himself with. He knew how to deal with them, yes, but -dammit!- he didn't have his cutter- fuck, he didn't have anything!- to protect himself with. And he was pretty sure hospital slippers were _not_ going to help him stomp them apart.

-_you killed them, you killed them, you killed them, YOU KILLED THEM-_

_"_FINE!" he yelled as he snatched up the the first thing he saw, oddly enough from a table he didn't even remember seeing in the first place. "If I killed them once, DAMNED if I won't kill them again! And this time I'll enjoy it all the more!"

"_Don't you mean you'll make sure they actually _stay _down this time?" _ another female voice chortled in the back of his mind. One that wasn't exactly 'helping', either.

"-Er...yeah! That too!"

_"Go get 'em, Tiger." _

"Nicole dammit-!"

"_I'm goin', I'm goin'..." _she griped as her voice exited his mind.

* * *

><p>"Holy shit!" someone cried as Patient Four suddenly armed himself with a vase of fake flowers and Patient Five started freaking out...well, Patient Four was doing something, anyway.<p>

"-OW!" another yelped as someone else punched them awake. All around the viewing staff were coming alive as -finally!- something seemed to be happening.

Although quickly it was also concluded that whatever it was probably wasn't so much in terms of 'progress' as it was in terms of 'potentially hazardous to patients' health'...

_Ah, well, _he thought as the frenzied scratches of pens on paper replaced the snores of earlier. _Let them have their fun..._

Believe me, these people have been waiting for this as much as you have (assuming of course that you've been waiting at all?).

* * *

><p>He was currently daydreaming about the good old days.<p>

Back when his mother used to make waffles in the morning, before he went to school.

Back when his father used to ruffle his hair and call him 'Sport'.

Back when that Unitologist pastor used to smile seductively at him and wink-

-Er, ok, maybe not that far back.

Ah, yes, those were the days. Funny how heavy doses of weird pharmacutical drugs could bring up so many memories...

_-That pastor always DID say I was the most attentive one at his sermons..._

BESIDES those ones. He never even liked Pastor O'Brien! Especially not like that!

...ew...

-_But he was always so nice. Sometimes he even gave me candy..._

Funny how weird pharamacutical drugs seemed to bring up the weirdest shit, too. He was pretty sure the creepy bastard never gave him candy, though.

_Sure he did. He gave me candy and took me for one-on-one study sessions. He told me all about the Marker, about convergence...about how my father was an unbeliever._

Yeah, his dad always had thought Unitology was bull...

_Father was an unbeliever...someone that wasn't good enough for a growing boy with such deep spiritual values as I had. Someone who would only hinder my beliefs..._

Wait, what? He didn't remember that...

_The good pastor told me that _he_ would be my father one day, He told me all about how he and my mother got along so well...how she was thinking about leaving my father for him..._

No, that wasn't right. His mother had always loved his father! She was a good woman, a damn good woman!

_-especially in BED._

What!

_She was a cheating whore and I knew but I just kept it to myself. I still loved her even though I knew she was nothing more than a-!_

No! NO! That wasn't his voice talking, he would never say that, not about his mother, never-!

_SHE was the reason my father killed himself! Had she not been slutting around my father might still be here today-!_

NO! His father was killed in a mining accident! He died in a fucking mining accident!

_He died because my mother was __**disloyal**__!_

BULLSHIT!

"Who's saying that?" he screamed. "Who the FUCK is saying that?"

A light tap on the shoulder cued him to turn around in rage, only to freeze up in horror as one of _them _latched onto him, it's mangled face inches from his own.

_YOU'RE saying it you crazy bastard! _it shrieked before driving the teeth of it's upper jaw (it didn't have a lower one) deep into his left shoulder.

* * *

><p>She was screaming at him again. He heard her, oh God he heard her! Where was she? He tried to blot out her voice, but no matter how hard he tried he just couldn't do it!<p>

Her screaming!

It was everywhere!

He couldn't take it, no, not right now-!

_NO-!_

* * *

><p>One of them broke from the pack and charged forward, it's hideously-warped arms reaching for him. The sound it emitted was terrible, but eh, he was used to it.<p>

He was also ready.

"Mother_fucker!_" he roared as he pulled back his arm.

* * *

><p>The whole viewing room was on the edge of their seats as the patients finally gave way to their own individual afflictions. Patient Five was holding his ears and cowering on the floor, before he suddenly went running straight at Patient Four, who hauled off and threw the ultimate 'Hail Mary' pass dead at him; the vase of flowers smashed cleanly into his forehead and dropped him like a cadaver. Patient Two was on the floor wrestling with himself, and from the looks of things he was losing spectacularly.<p>

"So, wait...what the hell're we supposed to glean from this?" his assistant nurse asked. He (I think you know it's that weird doctor from last chapter. I didn't feel like naming him; take three guesses why) only waved her question off.

This was getting good...and all he'd done was flick the lights!

He was starting to feel he deserved a promotion for such blatant brilliance...

* * *

><p>The necromorph hit the dirt -er, linoleum- and he seized his opportunity to put it down for good. He rushed over and began stomping the living shit out of it, various curses spewing from him as they had never spewed before. He drove his foot repeatedly into that sorry mother in the frantic hope that if he could just-get-off-it's-arm-!<p>

Ut, too late: something bear-hugged him from behind with an eager squealing roar.

"Like HELL!" he barked in retaliation as he pushed himself backwards with enough force to send both him and his attacker pitching to the floor. The beast seemed dazed upon impact, but he knew how long that shit lasted and he wasn't falling for it. Hastily he grabbed up a chair and held it high over the necro's head as it scrambled to get up, it's blades skittering over the floor as it attempted to get a hold-

* * *

><p>The audience cringed collectively as Patient Four began wailing on Patient Two with one of the assorted chairs. Behind him Patient Five lay in an unhealthy-looking fetal position, twitching on the floor he'd practically been stomped into, before-<p>

-a hologram popped up from the control board, causing nearly everyone to jump back in surprise.

"Aw man!" snapped the flustered-looking doctor that just cropped up. "Look, Patient One's in rare form today, I don't think we can send him in-!" he was tackled off-screen for a second as apparently Patient One pounced on him and took him down; four other people crowded the screen for a moment before managing to pry Patient One from the doctor, who popped back up sporting a bloody lip and a freshly-blackened eye. "See?" he panted as he wiped his lip on his sleeve.

"Hell with that! Send him in anyway!" someone opted. The man on the other end of the feed looked incredulous as Patient One's arms were seen straining for him from the far side of the screen.

"Are you kidding me? He'll kill someone!"

His face fell as the mass of people he was talking to began to chant as one, "Send. Him. In! Send. Him. In! Send. Him. In! Send. Him-!"

"Alright, dammit, fine! But fuck if I'm taking the fall for this!" In a huff he cut transmission and the experiment's staff began to cheer as they eagerly went back to watching the beat-down-in-progress going on in the viewing room.

* * *

><p>She was in rare form today, she was. Before they had almost never fought, and if they had it was (generally) only ever a low-scale verbal altercation. Nothing major. <em>Never<em> anything major.

Oh, but today...he was pretty sure she had just stomped his _ass, _and for no good reason no less.

_Alexis. Now you've gone too far..._

"Honey," he started as he uncurled his battered and heavily-bruised body in an effort to get up, as well as brushed away as much blood from his eyes as possible. His voice was far too calm for anyone who'd just been bashed in the face with a flower arrangement and then nearly trampled to death. "_Honey, _that _hurt_..." He lifted his head just high enough for his eyes to fix on hers...

Only that wasn't Alexis anymore.

That was...

"What's the matter, Nolan? I thought you _liked _it rough," she winked down at him.

"I-Isabel?"

She grinned playfully as he finally got back up.

"You're not so used to being with me that you'd start calling _me_ 'Alexis', now are you?"

"N-N-No, Isabel, of course not."

"Good." she purred. "You always did say I had it all..."

It was true; she _did _have it all. More than Alexis did, and in all the right places-

"-Except for that unsightly mole on your left buttock." he announced on sudden recollection. "That thing really is hideous-"

"Nolan!" she snapped, eyes flashing in sudden anger.

"I know, 'it's a birthmark'," he quoted her, continuing right along with a simple shrug. "I keep telling you to get it removed; even offered to pay-"

"Let's just focus on the task at hand here," she replied flatly, clearly unamused.

"-er, the what?"

"Come here and see me, big boy. It's been an _awfully _long time..." she reverted back to 'sex-kitten' mode (a feat in itself considering the mood-killer 'mole' remark). She began playing her tongue coyly across her lips, her vivd green eyes hooded by those shadowy lids of hers. Slowly she began to trace her right hand over the buttons of her blouse, up and down, up and down...stopping again at the very first one and working it apart with those devilishly crafty fingers...

He felt himself begin grinning like an idiot as she exposed more and more of her cleavage and he knew she was right. When it came to that, she was _always_ right.

"It certainly has," he cooed, striding forward (nevermind the slight limp) to take her and claim her just as he had so many times before. The brutal beating of before was now a distant (and labeled 'kinky') memory.

She was about to make him feel _all better_...

* * *

><p><em>FUCK! <em>

He saw it out of the corner of his eye: that other bastard was already getting back up, and this one he was attacking now seemed impervious to chairs! It was bleeding like a damn siv but that didn't mean anything!

He cracked it one last good one in the hopes it was at least dizzy before the tottering monstrosity behind cast him in it's shadow. He could see from his periph that it's arms were spread wide as it moved in to take him in it's 'oh-so-tender' (and juicy, for those who like their hugs 'extra rare') embrace-

And just when it got close enough...

-he promptly spun around and landed some well-aimed 'sweet chin music' on that freak. It yowled out as it went reeling, crashing into another of it's cohorts that just so happened to be coming in through the door.

Aw, man! He knew it was only a matter of time before they started managing door keypads!

"Fuck my life!" he snapped as he quickly overturned the biggest table in the room and dragged it into a corner. Snapping off one of it's legs, he hunkered down behind his make-shift barricade and dared these necro-swill to try getting him now. He realized he was essentially trapping himself but at least this way maybe he'd survive their onslaught long enough to think up a better plan...this one in hindsight was probably shit...

* * *

><p>Patient One was shoved uncerimoniously through the door just as Patient Five went careening backwards into him, instigating an instant mauling. Patient Two was still in a fog from the combined effects of his drugs and the savage-beating from Patient Four, who was currently hunkered down behind a table in the corner of the room and yelling various obscenities at the others.<p>

As for the onlookers, well...

"Place your bets here, folks!" called one of the male nurses. "So far I've got fifty credits on Four! How about Five? Five? No? One? -ok I've got five creds on One! C'mon people, let's see those wagers!"

* * *

><p><em>Father? <em>He thought as the man standing over him just smiled down at him.

"Son, your head's bleeding." He said gently. "Pretty badly, as a matter of fact."

"Yeah, I'm, somewhat aware of that-"

"You might wanna take better care of that cranium of yours, you know. After all, some of us don't even have one..." At that, a thin red line began to show on his father's neck. As he watched, the line became darker, and began to seep blood...

A moment later, his father's still-smiling head slipped clean off his shoulders and rolled away across the floor. His body, however, remained standing.

"F-Father? Father? FATHER-?"

As he tried desperately to get back up, his father's neck -what was left of it- began to swell and bulge as a new mass rose up from his throat. To his horrified eyes, the 'thing' broke the meaty membrane of tissues over the topmost part of the neck and rose out of it...but it was backwards...

Not for long. The bloody thing swiveled around to show a new skull, one that he'd seen before...

One that needed his father's arms to help it properly adjust itself.

_Oh God not again!_ he pushed himself backward as his father's body then fell prey to a number of squirming, squealing masses as they clambered out his flesh, sunk themselves in again from the outside, stretched his limbs, deteriorated him down to nothing.

Down to just loose pieces of flesh and the stringy creatures that newly comprised him...

And then the new head moaned as it's newly-formed body loomed over him; all tall and lanky and-!

* * *

><p>His head jerked up like that of an alerted meerkat (extinct animal reference; oh well) as he heard that weird moan that reminded him of what a nature show had once told him whales had sounded like.<p>

_Where the fuck is it? _

That big mother wasn't gonna hide it's tall skinny ass from him, oh no. This little peon slasher he'd dispatched easily enough; it was laying on the floor, motionless. That beast, heh, no way was he trying to bring that down without a weapon...those little ones that made it up were a right pain in the ass...

_Let's see here...chairs? No. This slasher's blades? Better for impalement, really...that wasn't going to do him much of a favor here, especially without kinesis..._

It moaned again.

_Random teddy bear...? Brilliant!_

He snatched up a totally random teddy bear from the floor and peered around warily for the divider...but oddly enough it was nowhere to be found...

Until it peered up from behind an overturned table.

_What the...they can make fortifications now? Whoa hell-!_

Maybe the situation was worse than he'd thought...

* * *

><p>"Now I think about, this is the Children's Room, isn't it?" someone whispered as Patient One took hold of his 'deadly weapon'. A few others pondered that as they watched.<p>

Now that they thought about it...

* * *

><p>The slashers seemed to have retreated, most likely to go try and figure out a way to route him. He'd been clever with picking his corner, though: nothing was getting past him unless they came straight at him.<p>

Sadly, they seemed to realize that, or at least some of them did, so they called in a veritable Goliath and sent _him _in.

He almost regretted having peeked over the table now; it gave an ear-splitting screech and charged him head-on.

OH shit...!

Isaac braced himself for it, braced himself, braced himself-

-but the beast never came forward any closer. Instead, it must've hurled something over the table, because a sickly-yellow pod landed next to his leg.

His defenses had been breached!

_Good God, they've learned how to lob grenades! SHIIIIIIIIIIII-!_

He launched himself over the table just in time to avoid being blasted into Convergence-land as the offending beast screeched what he could only assume was a victory cry. Pumped up as he was from nearly being blown apart, he jumped back up and ran his hardest forward, taking a running leap and clubbing it over the head with his table leg before it had time to properly react. It took a staggering step back and he took the initiative to smack it a couple more times in various places (looking a lot like a cop with a billy club...'Officer Clarke'? O.o) before the others took after him again.

"Ok you bastards, here I am! Let's go!" he challenged as they lunged forward, and the battle was on!

* * *

><p>"Is this any more disturbing than watching him make-out with a height scale?" a nurse asked as they all watched Patient Four now swinging wildly at open air; occasionally kicking-at and grappling-with things only he could see.<p>

...

"Naaaaaaaah."

* * *

><p>His vision was blurry and he hurt all over. The last thing he remembered was Isabel...and he grinned again to himself.<p>

"_Damn, _baby. I'm gonna be feeling this for weeks..."

He then noticed she was gone, and realized with some satisfaction that she'd probably gone off to light a cig.

_Hehe..._

Contentedly staring up at the ceiling, he tried to remember their time together, but oddly failed to do so. Then again, blunt-force trauma to the head prior to fornication can probably have that kind of effect on you. That and-

"_How're you feeling, baby?" _he heard as he felt something heavy begin moving up his very sore leg. The weight was uncomfortable, but he could deal with it. The reward was gonna be so sweet...

"Like I'm ready for round two," he said in his most silky tone as she brought herself to where he could feel her warm breath on his neck-

"_Wait, _**what**?" she snapped incredulously as her eyes suddenly met his, and his stomach sank to levels he didn't even know existed as _Alexis_, not Isabel, leaned over him.

* * *

><p>That which had once been his father was closing in on him, and he knew the only defence he had at the moment was his own body. His mind was racing as he backed away, trying to buy time. Maybe if he stunned it somehow...he could always rush it, that might do the trick. Force it into a wall and then get the fuck away...<p>

* * *

><p>The devil from behind the table had leapt clear and run off, where to he hadn't the slightest clue. All he knew was that it just beat him up and it was still living, which meant that now he was really gonna have to watch his ass something <em>fierce;<em> slashers (in reasonably small numbers of course) were child's play compared to that monstrosity.

And speaking of slashers...

There was one now, working over what he thought -but wasn't sure- was a corpse. His eyes went wide as he remembered what experience had taught him slashers did with dead bodies. He was gonna have to stop it-!

"Hey asshole!" he screamed. "Yeah, you! Over here, ya ugly prick!" It's head jerked up and it's eye (the other was hanging from the socket) locked on him. Giving an excited growl, it dropped it's former prize and charged. He braced himself, knowing full-well how to handle this one.

_Wait for it..._

* * *

><p>Something pounced him and pain seared through his body as something slammed him into a wall. It's roar was deafening; in honor of it's pinning him he felt it draw back and subconsciously sensed it raising a blade for the finishing blow...<p>

He took that minor shift in it's weight to land his elbow hard into it's neck region; when it withdrew a little further he spun and grabbed it's face as hard as he could before twisting it's head clean off and kicking away the body. Even without a head it would still attack him: he was gonna have to dispatch it a little further if he wanted to make sure it stayed down. And he knew just how he was gonna do it...

* * *

><p>"Holy Shit!" a cry went up as Patient One twisted Patient Two's neck so hard his head literally popped off like a friggin' grape.<p>

"Quick, call Security!" another snapped as some of the others voiced for an immediate cancelation of the experiment.

"The line's busy!"

"Ah hell!" the lead doctor yowled as Patient One proceeded to wrestle an arm off the lifeless body of Patient Two. Then he caught sight of Patient Four, still battling the invisible masses of 'Altman-knows-what'...

The only thing to do while the line was busy was to continue watching; no one was going in there. Part Two of the experiment had in fact called for such but screw that now; nobody with even a quarter of a brain stem was going in there unless they were heavily armed, and at the moment all they had were clipboards and office pens. Yeah...

Meanwhile, in the blacked-out security room...

"Is this the 'Hot Girl's Hotline'?" the chief of security murmured into the hologram. "Hurhurhur...yes, can you put me through to 'Dotty'? Aw yeah..."

* * *

><p>Isaac was busy grappling still another slasher when he saw yet another slip out of the shadows and move in on him.<p>

"Oh motherFUCK me!" he yelped as he tried to fend this other one off quickly while still opting to stay away from it's vicious teeth. It's fangs were angled right for his neck and if he made even the slightest mistake he was surely in for one hell of a hickey...

But suddenly someone else dove into the fray, cutting off the oncoming necro with a powerful 'spear' that took both parties sailing across the room. Isaac just barely avoided having his jugular turned to a necro's V8 as he kicked the first beast away and sprinted toward the _human_ that just had saved him.

"Hey man, thanks," he said as he grabbed a nearby chair (his table leg had been lost at some point in his previous battle) and took up a defensive stance.

"Don't mention it," the other guy said, grabbing his weapon up from the floor: a slasher blade. "We can't hold them off forever," he said as he caught sight of Isaac's stance. "C'mon! We've gotta get out of here! Follow me!" he then made a break for the door, Isaac hot on his tail; chair in tow.

"I didn't even know that was there," he breathed as suddenly his new friend swore loudly.

"SHIT! It's fused shut!"

"Here! Cover me; I'm an engineer!" Isaac thrust his chair at the man and ducked down to begin working over the door panel. His new partener began to visciously ward off their 'would-be' attackers as Isaac fervently worked to override the door locks.

"C'mon...c'mon...! Ok, I got it!" he cried as the other man shoved away one of the horde with the chair. Isaac grabbed up the slasher blade and took over 'cover-duty' as his new friend scooted through the door; once he was safe Isaac took off after and the door shut just in time to hinder the necromorph's advance.

Even though some of them had learned how to work doors...

* * *

><p>The mad melee only got stranger as Patients One and Four suddenly recognized each other and entered into an 'alliance' of sorts. That in itself was incredible! And it seemed the two were now seeing the same things; again, holy shit! Then they hacked the door panel and managed to pull off an escape! Holy...wait, what? OH HOLY SHIT!<p>

* * *

><p>"Ow..." he muttered as he struggled to stay awake, much less get up. He'd been so scared in the face of Alexis' impending wrath that he must've blacked out; in light of that his battered body hurt worse than ever. On the plus side, he noted he was back in one of the viewing rooms...maybe someone could give him something for pain? Something that hopefully <em>wasn't<em> perscribed as another 'session'?

He finally managed to push himself into a sitting position and the first thing his eyes fell on was the headless corpse in the corner of the otherwise-wrecked room. It was still gushing blood all over the floor...

"Daddy?" a voice came from behind him. "Daddy, what's that?"

_Oh my God my son! He'll see that! _

"Son!" he said as brightly as humanly possible, spinning around and trying to use his own body -beaten and unsightly as it was- to try and block the cadaver from the little boy's inquiring eyes. "Son, ah...what're, what're you doing here?"

"Mommy said I should spend some time with you."

"Boy, 'Mommy' sure knows how to pick the perfect times..." he growled under his breath.

"What, Daddy?"

"Nothing!"

* * *

><p>"Aw, hell..." the new guy exhaled as they both paled before the brute before them. 'Brute' quite literally...it stood before them, pawing the ground angrily with it's big, beefy forearms as it stared them down. Next to him, (Isaac) gulped, but none-the-less raised his chair for combat.<p>

"Are you crazy?" he gasped at this. What did this guy think he was up against? An over-sized office desk?

"Probably..." he answered in a low tone. He was anxious, but he was also serious. And determined.

"'Probably' my ass! You can't just-!"

"I'm goin' for it!" (Isaac) screamed as he charged ahead. The brute roared it's own challenge and stood it's ground against the oncoming loon, weilding a chair over his head like a true winner.

Then again, maybe if they could just get past it, they could escape further into the facility, maybe even get out-!

Maybe this guy wasn't so crazy after all...

_Then again, _he thought as the Brute swept him aside effortlessly with a single sweep of a giant arm...

* * *

><p>"Security? Security! Yes! The patients have escaped the viewing room and are-what? Yes! ...yes...yes! And they're both armed...no. One with a chair and one with another man's arm- w-why are you laughing? Dammit that shit's not funny! Wha-no! Just get down here! And be careful! -Pardon? 'What are they doing now'? Let me see..." the doctor on the phone refocused his attention to the monitor showing the escaped patients. The one the rest of the viewing staff were staring at in silence.<p>

"Right now they're...!" he suddenly found himself unable to finish that sentence. Why?

The two patients...were attacking (and quite visciously)...

A vending machine.

"Uh..." he gaped as the sweat began to bead on his forehead.

* * *

><p>The brute wasn't budging and they were both running low on stamina. Any more of this pointless attacking and they'd be layed out in no time. And trying to route it just wasn't doing it either; the beast was more than capable of fending them both off at the same time, from any side...no matter how they looked at it, they were fucked. In the ass. With a spatula.<p>

Why a spatula, well...he had no idea, but it seemed appropriate, so he thought it. He tried relating that thought to his 'chair weilding maniac' of an accomplice, but alas...

"No! There's gotta be a way; I'm not giving up now, dammit!" he snapped in response. He rushed forward but again managed only to bounce pitifully off his enemy; skidding to a stop on the floor alongside him after being thrown back.

"...give up yet?" he leaned over him.

"Nnngh...n-no! No-Not yet!" he strained his body to rise again, and repeated his performance; only this time landing on his stomach instead of his back. The brute howled out and he actually thought it might -just _might- _be laughing at them...

Scratch that: it _definitely_ was laughing at them. It leaned back and shot a large pod from it's gut that smacked (Isaac) dead in the head as he made to get up again. Needless to say...

"How 'bout now?" he leaned over his again-fallen comrade.

"ENGH-!" he made to get up-

_CRACK!_

"OW-Mother-!" he went down again.

"..."

"N-N-Nevah-!

_CRACK! _

"Ack-!"

"...now?"

"FINLAND!"

_CRACK!_

..._Man I'm gonna __die__ here_... he thought lamely as the brute continued to assail them from afar; well, one of them, anyway...

* * *

><p>Just as the Security team rounded the bend (in full-blown riot gear no less) they all found themselves unable to hold their shock-prods properly as their hands -and jaws- suddenly went slack. There were the escaped patients, all right...<p>

Clearly they'd been attacking the poor vending machine before them; but on the same note, the vending machine now seemed to be fighting back: the battered thing was shooting cans at the two men, neatly popping Four in the head with each one it shot. Finally sick of the fact that his partner seemed no longer capable of thought from so many blows to the head, Patient One made to shove him out of the cans' path; consequently he took one to the crotch, sank to his knees in pain, and took another to the face before slumping over in a groaning heap, holding himself. One of his teeth bopped off one of the Security Guards' face masks, and that seemed to rouse him from his stupor long enough for him to call in someone from Medical...as well as somebody to fix the vending machine.

* * *

><p>(And just to end this on a much brighter note...)<p>

It was dark in the room, the only light coming from the monitor before him. His finger's were practically flying over the keys as he typed in what he'd seen today of the patient's' behavior. The discovery they'd made today would surely help their research into the Marker by leaps and bounds!

Tiedemann would be pleased.

Though the day had been, well...'strange' enough (and certainly chok-full of it's wonky mishaps) they had watched as somehow the dementia of Patient's One and Four had actually _fused..._an occurance which could possibly expedite their research by _years_! If they managed to tap into it properly...

But yet...

Something was troubling him. No, not the violence (or stupidity) of the patients- they were always like that: 'there' one minute; 'gone' the next. No, what bothered him was more deep-seated, more profound...

Something was whispering to him, it's voice getting louder with each passing moment. The more he tried to shrug it off, the more insistant it seemed to become. He wanted to ignore it, but somewhere deep down...he didn't.

It seemed to sense such, and nagged him all the more.

Eventually words started becoming discernable from the static. They made little sense, but he supposed that was because he wasn't listening hard enough...

_"...the Master..."_

_"-near..."_

_"...no?"_

_"Hidden..."_

_"-hiding."_

_"...hurry..."_

_"...find."_

_"-waffles?"_

_"...wha?_

He strained to listen harder, until sentences -whole ones- came to him, but they were still in a fragmented form. By now he was focusing so hard on the voices that he took no notice of the very real '_thud!'_ from the vent behind him.

He didn't see the milky-white gleam of eyes peering out at him, lit by the soft glow of the console.

He wasn't aware of anything wrong...until the voices in his head stopped altogether, to be replaced by one very deep, raspy tone.

_You're keeping the Master locked away from us..._ it hissed.

"What 'Master'?" he found himself asking out loud.

_OUR Master..._

_"_I don't understand."

_Of course not. One who does not belong cannot possibly hope to comprehend..._

"Then why are you telling me this?" he was more than a little irked by how vague this little chat was...let alone it's implications. He needed a day off...

_You're quite cruel to our Master, you know. Further subjecting him to the vengence of our former Keeper... _the voice turned to a silken, icy tone.

"And what'm I to make of that?" he snapped.

_You'll find out...soon enough. _

-back at 'home'...

"So did you find him or what?" asked one of the slashers.

"Of course I did!" retorted the leaper fresh back from 'staking out the joint'.

"...and?" someone else pressed as the others found their way over.

"Got his room key right here," the leaper said. "Hold on, lemme get it..."

It widened it's jaws and heaved a moment before coughing up the keycard to Isaac's room, as well as a leg and half a torso.

"AUGH!" some turned away. Others, of course...

"-And you didn't save me any?" someone said grudgingly.

"I'm sure there's some pieces left if you wanna go find 'em," the leaper shrugged. The inquiring slasher then vaulted into the nearest vent with a loud 'Sweet!'.

"So what'd _that_ taste like?" one of the spitters poked at the torso in disgust with a blade.

"Like a strawberry lollipop," the leaper suddenly zoned out at the 'human' rememberance of what strawberry lollipops actually tasted like (they do have vague recollections of their 'past lives' every now and then, after all).

"Blegh...looks like 'grape' to me..." the spitter said with disdain.

-Speaking of 'lollipops'...a little later on, the slasher that went 'looking for leftovers' just so happens to return with...

"-a Blow Pop!" it says happily, gnawing on a man's (guess who's) head stuck on a small column of spine serving as a 'stick'.

**~Holy Snap! Long chapter maybe? Damn, I went crazy on this one...**

**Ok guys, well I tried. Last chapter...meh. With luck this'll be an improvement? *crosses fingers* I **_**did **_**add in a suggestion, though (kinda): here's hoping I didn't disappoint? ':D eheh? **

**Well anyway, enough of my kissing up. If I failed I failed! Lol :P**

**But in all seriousness this actually started out being strangely serious...and then I had an energy drink, looked it over again, and said 'Nay'. **

**And thus new and stranger concepts were made for me to play with in future installments...**

**Yes, so now I leave you with this: Next chapter probably wont be up for a good while. Not to worry though, this story isn't going to die anytime soon so far as I know, unless it cracks up and blows it's own head off with a Plasma Cutter. That being said, now I won't have to feel like I need a filler chapter *cough: Four! cough* just to prove this story's breathing; it'll be right where I left it, giggling creepishly in a corner of your computer...until you flush the air. **

**Which I hope you won't do. **

**Alrighty then, I sincerely hope you enjoyed. I giggled a bit (not creepishly) over some parts myself, but that could've been the caffeine. Who knows.~**

**P.S.: Oh, before I forget: do you think this chapter should be rated 'M'? I'm not 100% on it...I don't want to overrate but I don't want to underrate either. Future stuff might get bumped up to 'M' here and there for sure, but what do you think? **


	6. Chapter 6

**~Forgive! It's a deviation from humor! :O I know it's terrible of me but it's really just a something-something so you don't need to read it; next chapter gets back to business.~**

_He was back in the darkened, bloodied halls of the USG Ishimura, or what was left of it anyway. Could barely call this space-bound hell a ship anymore..._

_The only sound was that of his own footsteps and his low, shuddering breaths. He kept a firm grip on the Plasma Cutter he'd affectionately started referring to as Marty as he made his way deeper into the dark, all the while bracing himself for what he knew must surely lie beyond._

_Waiting, watching..._

_He felt their eyes on him as he progressed, the eyes of the many reanimated dead. _

_The remnants of what had once been a crew of healthy, living persons. _

_They were waiting for something, all of them. He could feel it. _

_Knowing them, it wasn't hard to guess what it was they were waiting for. Somehow he held the strange notion he was walking into a trap, but as is the way of dreams, he was not in total control of his actions. While his brain screamed at him to stop, to go back, his body kept moving forward as if of it's own will. The only thing he felt in control of right now was Marty; Marty always listened and did as told. _

_Marty knew the dangers of this place just as much as he did. _

_He continued on until he found himself at a door drenched in a dark liquid that could only be one thing, and despite all the warning alarms sounding off in his head he still pressed forward; opening the door and proceeding without a backward glance. _

_The sputtering, dying light of the overhead fixtures illuminated the usual grisly scene: bodies maimed beyond recognition heaped against a wall slathered in blood and gore; parts of those bodies strewn about the floor, everywhere red...just, red..._

_So much horror. Too much for most humans to take. Why he hadn't succumbed like the rest of them he didn't know. _

_Maybe his time was upon him now. _

_Maybe that was what he was going towards...his fate..._

_Another door, this one leading him to...wait, this couldn't be right..._

_Passing through this door, he found himself back on the colony, the planet's dusty winds whirling about him in a lonesome manner. Before him lay the gaping hole the Ishimura had punched into it, and somewhere deep within it must surely be the beast of the Marker: the 'Hive Mind', as Kyne had called it. _

_Was it dead, or was it lurking in the depths?_

_He didn't know. _

_The wind picked up, temporarily blinding him as he put up a hand to shield his eyes. When the gale tamed down, he found himself at the Marker pedestal. There it stood, in all it's wretched glory, and before it..._

_"Nicole?" he heard his voice call out. It sounded so distant...or maybe that was the wind playing tricks on him. Carrying, dragging away his words just as they left his mouth..._

_There she stood, just as she had so long ago now, smiling at him, like as if nothing was wrong. Like as if this were all just a hellish dream...oh how he wished it were. But these things were real, and no amount of- well, anything- could make him forget them. _

_Or her._

_"Isaac," she said gently, striding away from the seemingly dormant rock toward him. "What's the matter, Isaac?"_

_"This, these things...everything! Why'm I here, Nicole? I don't want to be here..."_

_She shook her head, smiling as if he'd just said something stupid. Perhaps he had, but he meant it no matter how stupid it sounded. He didn't want to be here...couldn't she understand that? She was the only person who had ever understood him before. Couldn't she still, now?_

_"Isaac, Isaac, Isaac," she tutted, before meeting his eyes again with hers. _

_"You'll never understand the meaning in the end." she said suddenly. Behind her, the Marker began to shine with that other-worldly light that stung his eyes and forced him to squint. _

_"What?" he asked as she turned and took a few steps back toward the Marker._

_"We're standing at the gate, Isaac. You'll meet the darker fate..."_

_He didn't understand what she was saying. 'He'll meet the darker fate'? What did that mean?_

_He didn't get to ask her, because just as he opened his mouth to speak she was suddenly right there in front of him again, only this time so much closer than before. He barely even remembered blinking, let alone seeing her move. Her closeness was slightly unsettling, but her voice -and her next move- helped bring him to ease._

_"Your purity and rage, your passion and your hate," she murmured, drawing closer still. "You promised more than bliss, with your God and with your-" she quickly pecked his cheek, "-kiss." Her eyes glittered with a strange mischievous light. One he was all too willing to follow...and that was when things started to get, weird. _

_She dropped to one knee then, confusing him as she continued right along, "I'm on my knees. I beg your mercy-"_

_He dropped to kneel as well, taking hold of her shoulders in a light but firm grip. "My soul is my loss," he said over her, shaking his head. "I'm well hung from your cross-"_

_"Then take me!" she cut him off, the fierceness of her voice and the devilish light dancing in her eyes catching him off guard as she shrugged off his grip and swiftly took his hands in her own. "Take me in your arms my love and rape me-!"_

_"Nicole!" he cried out, pushing her away at those words. What the hell-?_

_"Don't hide behind your rage," a wry smile now crossed her lips as she regarded him with an almost disappointed look. "I know you love me."_

_"And always will," he found himself saying as that dread feeling of hopelessness began to creep in. _

_"You're my possession," she continued, still wearing that same expression as she slowly rose from the ground to stand over him. "Of that, my love, there really is no question..."_

_"Don't hide behind your rage," he found himself saying curiously, knowingly repeating what she'd said just a moment ago. "I know you love me-"_

_"And always will." This time she said it with him, grinning as he rose to stand now, too. Something seemed off about all this...but how or why he couldn't seem to put his finger on. As the winds of the ruined planet swirled around them, and the Marker continued to glow brilliantly against the dreary backdrop, he knew his time with her was drawing to a close, but not yet done. In a way, he truly didn't want it to end, but something in the back of his conscious not only called for such, it demanded it. _

_She seemed to catch on to his inner struggle, and so pressed on with her words, only this time she dropped both her gaze and her tone so that she was almost whispering, "My better half, it's true, has seen the darker side of you. Innocence stripped away..." she raised her eyes once more, her expression now one of sorrowful apology. "At least I've the brighter fate..."_

_"Take me," she held out a hand as behind her, the Marker grew brighter, it's light seeming to draw her into it. _

_"Rape me." That she said sarcastically, throwing a wink at him as he struggled with his own inner demons. For as much as he wanted to take her hand, he just couldn't do it!_

_The light only grew stronger and more powerful, blotting out more of her figure as she still reached out to him in the hopes of taking his hand. As the light around her silhouette cast her 'inner' features into shadow, he noticed that they became bloody, making her look more like she had on the shuttle...no..._

_"I know you love me..." her voice began to fade away, and then, in a burst of white light-_

"-ISAAC!"

"-AH!" he yelped as the 'dream' abruptly ended, leaving him dazed, confused, and momentarily frightened as the doctor in front of him clicked off the small light he'd been shining in his eyes.

What the fuck just happened? Where was Nicole? Where was he? H-Had that been real?

"Third time this week," the doctor sighed grudgingly as he returned to his desk, watching with a slightly raised eyebrow as Patient Four wildly scanned the room in an effort to get his bearings. When he finally seemed 'back', the doctor continued.

"So, what did you see this time, Isaac?" he asked, almost boredly.

"I saw...her."

"Your lover?"

"No, my mother."

"Wouldn't surprise me."

"I saw Nicole."

"Right, your lover. And what did she say to you, Isaac? Anything?"

Isaac paused as he considered what he'd just seen. What he'd heard; said. "She said-"

"_...and always will..."_

"-nothing." he replied at last. The doctor frowned, marked something down, and strode out to call for someone to take him back to his room. As the door shut behind him, Isaac sat quietly in his chair, eyes closed.

A smile slowly, deliberately spreading across his lips as he remembered...

_"...and always will..."_

_Yes, Nicole. 'And always will'..._

**~Whoa, did it just get dark here (uh, again-ish?), or is it just me? Well, ok, 'dark'-er; I don't think Dead Space could ****ever**** be called 'bright' (even if you turned the whole Ishimura into a giant Lite Brite and pegged pretty-color ponies all over it's walls; still, just no). This is my first time combining a fic and music in this such way, but while I was writing up what actually **_**would **_**have been **_**this**_** chapter, 'Kiss' by London After Midnight came on so I fit it into another 'dementia' thing. I personally think the song fits well with Isaac and Nicole...in that creepy way that only those two could share.**

**Yes**** I did the dastardly deed of turning the lyrics into a conversation, but I only 'tweaked' them a little bit! -That outta be enough to ward off an angry music company claiming 'shenanigans', right? :P**

**ANYWAY! Again, hope you enjoyed, as well as didn't mind the short detour from the regularly-scheduled crack I have the nerve to call a fic. XD ~**


	7. Chapter 7

**~Ugh, would you believe that the last couple chapters I had worked out got screwed up on my flash drive so that now I can't use them? Bugger that sucks...and I really don't want to have to write all that stuff up again, it won't be the same, y'know? So instead I'm just going to plow ahead into the actual game and go from there...yeah. At least things'll start to follow along the set-up as I have it better now, so that should be good...**

**PS- I hope I got that doctor-guy's name right, I dunno, somebody told me they got it from somewhere and I just went with it. If it's a made up name and I took it I apologize but that's what I heard and I've no clue where they got it from. **

Tiedemann's sitting in his office, his face buried in his hands. The past week and a half has been for him a total nightmare, what with having to deal with the deaths of both a patient and one of his higher-end doctors, the latter of which he still couldn't explain for the life of him. The whole room spattered with a fine coating of gore, the bulk of a body missing, and no one to blame in the slightest for it? Ugh...

And the paperwork was _still_ piling up on his desk. He'd authorized an investigation, but of course because the doings here were as secret as they were, he couldn't inform anyone of this, so the rest of the Administration was just going to have to stick it; he neither could nor would tell them anything beyond the fact that yes, the guy was, in fact, dead. Funny, though, how a doctor can become such a big deal post-mortem...none of these people harrasing him now had given a lick about this guy prior to. Damn waste of paper, this mess was...

Just as Tiedemann's about to set to work trying to diminish the number of papers on his desk, however-

"ARGH!" he howls in frustration at the lack of a handy pen, only to hear a shriek in front of him that causes him to shriek in turn. Rather highly pitched, for that matter...

"What the- what the hell do you want?" roars an enraged Tiedemann as his secretary cowers before him. A second later and three guards troop in, Pulse Rifles drawn.

"You shrieked, sir?" one of them says importantly after a quick scan of the area. The other two promptly seize the poor secretary and start hustling her out of the room at gunpoint.

"Don't worry, sir!" calls one of them over his shoulder. "We're detaining her now!"

"Move it, you!" barks the other as the secretary cries out in a panic.

"What the-?" the EarthGov Director starts, unable to keep up with the whirl of action going on around him. "Oh for the love of God!" he snaps finally, jumping up from behind his desk.

"Don't you mean 'Altman'?" queries the lead guard.

Tiedemann chooses to ignore that one-liner from hell. "Bring her back here! That's my secretary!"

"No-can-do, sir." The guard says flatly.

"And why not?" snarls the Director. Being talked down to by a guard is not on the list of 'Things That Just _Might_ Amuse Tiedemann'. Far from it, actually.

"She's already been detained, sir. She'll be up before the EarthGov Firing Squad by noon tomorrow."

Tiedemann's face falls. "Are you that thick, man? She wasn't even armed! You could tell that just by-!"

"I understand that, sir, but Section 3-4-8 of the EarthGov Statute of Guard Behavior states that-" here the guard clears his throat loudly before continuing, " 'Should the Director shriek in such a fashion as to have one assume that a five year old girl just saw a spider in his quarters, whatever the cause is found to be is to be detained immediately or killed on sight.' End quote." The man sighs. "You're lucky we chose to detain her, that Perkins guy we just hired can get pretty trigger-happy. At least this way you can go down and file for her release." He shrugs. Tiedemann, however, looks like his eyes are about to pop out of their sockets and roll laps around on the floor.

"When...the hell...did that one come about?" he says, trying to contain the urge to crack that man in his helmet with a weighty bookend before going to harass his own superiors.

"When the rulebook was revised, sir. You should look it over sometime."

"...You're dismissed until further notice." growls Tiedemann, peering up at the man even though his head is still turned down from having a minute ago been glaring down his desk. The soldier snaps a salute and marches out, but just as the door opens for him to leave...

"WAIT!"

"Yes, sir?" the confused guard turns.

A pause. Then: "...I did _not_ shriek like a girl."

"Not at all, sir." responds the guard, blessing his helmet for how well it hides his facial features. Just because his voice is straight doesn't mean his face is; he can already feel the fresh tears of mirth rolling down his cheeks. "You shrieked in a very -manly- manner. ...May I go now, sir?" he asks, for fear that the Director might see him quivering with the effort of holding in his amusement and 'dismiss' him in a whole different way.

Tiedemann's eyes narrow a moment as he scrutinizes the guard, before finally waving him off. "Yes, yes. Go." The guard snaps another salute and scoots off in a hurry, causing Tiedemann to wonder...

And yet, with the patients...or, at least, the only one that matters anyway...

Ever since the 'group therapy' incident, despite the fact that the patient's are finally starting to shake off their various breaks and bruises from their last encounter with each other, both the hospital staff and Tiedemann are of the belief that they should still give it more time before trying that kind of stunt again. Beneficial as it may be, rushing something of this magnitude is _not_ an option (especially owing the trouble the 'cleaning up' process has caused). So sessions are resumed as they went before and the mishaps are kept as minimal as humanly possible...though like these people have _any_ real say in that...

"Right, let's try this shit again," Dr. Foster announces as he re-takes his seat, having just gotten himself a large espresso to help him continue the interview with Patient Four through a bruised eye and an even more-bruised ego. "Now, where I believe we left off. You were telling me about-"

"They're in the hallway," Isaac breathes, suddenly staring hard into space. Edgar Foster's face falls. Oh boy.

"That's the video rental guys," He responds shortly, so very much not in the mood for this, the usual bull. "They're bringing in a shipment of movies the Department requested. Something about 'patient entertainment'. Now-" he skims through his notes. "-We were discussing those nightmares of yours," he looks up to see Isaac's still in his previous fog. "Any day now," Foster grumbles, tapping his pen against the desk irritably as he waits for Isaac to come back.

He's just beggining to nod off when-

"AH! THE VENTS! THEY'RE IN THE VENTS-AUGH!" screams Mr. Clarke, whipping backwards out of his chair as Foster starts horribly and nearly follows suit.

"What the-?" he cries as the engineer thrashes around on the floor like a man possessed, floundering around with his straightjacket. "WHY me? Why?"

10 minutes later...

"For the sake of MY sanity, just tell me what the hell her name was!" Foster moans after about the fifth time asking, his head down on the table. Just next to him is an ashtray with about eight spent cigarrettes in it, and a ninth one smoldering away, and they've only been in this session now for little over an hour. Imply something?

"Who?" Isaac questions in all seriousness. Foster raises his head to meet the engineer's gaze.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Nope."

"Awwl...!" Foster claps a hand to his forehead as Isaac just smiles over at him, unaware of anything being amiss.

Some time after that...

"Nicole," Isaac growls, as though unveiling the name of some sworn adversary, narrowing his eyes at the wall behind Foster.

"Oh thank God!" Foster sighs, his hair on end by now as a side-effect of having to deal with his patient. As if on cue, however, wouldn't you know it-

"I didn't want it to end like this," Nicole coos, suddenly right behind Foster.

"AH! Eddie, look out!" Isaac starts.

"Ah hell!" Foster takes the 'cue' and quickly uses the excuse presented to dart out to go fetch his third espresso, leaving Isaac alone with...her.

"I really wanted to see you again." she continues softly. "I loved you. I've always loved you..." She grins at him and winks.

"Hey wait..." Isaac ponders aloud. "Why don't you look, y'know...dead?" He shrugs at the lack of a better word.

Before she can answer, Foster bustles back in. He drinks heavily from his large cup before bringing it back down onto the table a little harder than intended, so that a few drops of espresso fleck onto his notes.

"Nicole Brennan!" he cries as he wipes off said notes. "She was a Senior Medical Officer aboard-!"

"The Ishimura," Isaac adds before Foster can finish his sentence. Behind Foster, Nicole nods in silence.

"Yes!" Foster exclaims, sitting back down. "The USG Ishimura!" _My God, I might actually get to go _home_ tonight!_ he thinks as he presses on with the interview. "Part of a mining operation on-"

"Aegis 7," Isaac finishes for him yet again. Foster narrows his eyes, er, eye. One was already narrowed on account of Mr. Clarke.

_FLASHBACK..._

_"Isaac!" barks a male voice from somewhere within the void of his sub-conscious. _

_Who the hell is Isaac? he thinks, but then a second later-_

_"AH-GOD!" he shouts as a hand collides with the back of his head._

_"Ugh, not this again," groans the voice from before. "Mr. Clarke!" a rapid snapping sound is heard. Opening his eyes, he sees a man snapping his fingers in his face. _

_"What the hell was that for?" he rubs the back of his head as the man in front of him shakes his own and jots something down in a book. _

_"Subject required the use of mild force to regain focus after the second test," the man says into an audio log. That's not important though. What __**is **__important is..._

_"HEY! Get your meat-hooks off my Pi!" roars Isaac, earning an awkward glance from the addressed. _

_"Excuse me?" the doctor says, setting his pen inside his shirt pocket and fixing his subject with a bemused gaze._

_"My Pi!" Isaac snarls again, shooting daggers at the doctor. "Put him down or so help me-"_

_"Hmph. And what're you going to do?" the doctor sneers, but that quickly changes as Isaac lunges across the table after him before he can really react properly._

_"THIS!" screams the enraged Isaac, and suddenly those two're thrashing around on the floor like a couple of wild animals. After a quick box in the eye, courtesy of our beloved engineer, downs the 'good doctor', Isaac jumps up with his prize Pi, only to realize..._

_"Hey, wait a minute..." he pouts. "You aren't Pi-ACK!" he suddenly drops to the floor, out cold. The guard responsible for the knock-out blow looms over the doctor as he rubs his sore eye. _

_"What the hell do you want?" the doctor snaps, seeing the look on the guard's face._

_"Only to tell you that I just sent that vid to the rest of the staff on this floor," the guard chortles, putting away his mobile device. The doctor pales instantly. _

_"Y-You bastard son of a-!" _

_END FLASHBACK_

"I don't remember that part," Isaac says cheerfully from across the table as the doctor returns to the here and now.

"What are you talking about?" The doctor scowls, but then... "Wait a minute...did you...?" he chokes as Isaac just nods, unaware of any harm done. Or, for that matter, just how wrong that whole concept is.

"Yeah, weird huh?" he says as the doctor's uninjured eye twitches furiously. A few moments of awkward silence and some serious eye-twitching later...

"You should really get that checked out." Isaac says, staring.

"I'm going to choose to forget that whole conversation." Foster shakes his head.

"That's probably best." nods the deranged engineer.

More odd silence later...

"Ok, really now," Foster finally says, sounding more like himself as we all know him from the _actual_ opening of DS2.

"Getting back to the matter at hand..." After scanning his notes, Foster sees where they left off. "Right," he says, more to himself than his patient. "We were talking about the mining operation on Aegis 7. I understand communications went down shortly after their arrival. You were-"

Again Isaac cuts him off. "-part of the repair mission. Yep." he nods, grinning dimly. 'Eddie' glares, but continues on.

"Yes. A mission you volunteered for, am I right?"

"I just said 'yep' you-"

"Alright!" snaps the doctor, leaning over the table to stare down the guy in the straightjacket (oooo scary). He then states in an undertone, "Listen, you, you're cutting in on my lines, dammit. I've gotta look professional, y'know." He frowns deeply, but even deeper still when Isaac adds to that.

"You're probably gonna want to use some hair gel then," Isaac suggests as the other sits back and picks up his drink again, followed quickly by a long drag on that ninth cig previously mentioned.

The interview continues (as it should), right up until Isaac's dead girlfriend (having gone wholly unnoticed until this very moment) climbs up on the desk, and then it gets weird again.

_Hot damn! My lucky night! _Isaac thinks wildly as she perches before him. _Take it off, baby!_

Sadly for him, all he gets instead is:

"Make us whole!" she hisses in his face, and then he blacks out.

"Son of a bitch," Foster sighs heavily, having just called a guard to cart Mr. Clarke's dead ass back to his holding area. "I hate my job." He packs up his equipment and hustles out, shaking off the serious thrill of the chills that just came over him. _Why the hell was he staring at me like that?_ He thinks as he recalls the look on Patient Four's face just before he passed out. Like a deprived man at a strip joint...

"Why was his tongue hanging out like that?" comments a necromorph from their 'home', having just finished probing through Nicole's thoughts along with all the others.

"Oooooooooh! Get it!" calls out a slasher, doing pelvic thrusts to emphasize the point. As the others hoot and jeer, Nicole's voice shrieks through all of their subconcious, "STAY OUT OF MY MIND YOU SICK SONS OF BISCUITS!"

"...What's a biscuit?" asks one of the horde quietly as they all shrink down like children just put in a time-out.

"Maybe this is a biscuit," pipes up a lurker, using one of the tentacles from it's back to hold up the keycard that had been stolen some time before. Before anything can be said or done otherwise, the lurker promptly swallows said keycard, causing the rest to stare on and yowl out in horror.

"NOOOOOOOO!"

The lurker looks pleasantly oblivious as it comments, "Not bad. Could've used something though, it wasn't nearly as good as-EEEEYAH!" it screams as it suddenly goes sailing across the room and smacks off a far wall.

"And she says this is a BAD thing!" barks the enraged divider that just booted that little creatin. "NOW how are we going to free the Master?"

"We _could_ always fall back on Dave's idea," shrugs one of the many slashers, gesturing a sythed arm toward a nearby leaper.

"And just, er, what was that again?"

"What, 'tearing down the establishment'?" Dave prompts.

"Yeah, yeah that's the one!"

"Hmm...and just how did that go again?"

~**And off we go! To hell with the 'seriousness' attempts (unless you like them...like chapter 3 type-seriousness though), this fic was founded on madness and that's where it's gonna stay! -Hopefully it works out and still qualifies as 'funny'...? Eh, expect the bizarre in future installments. Untill then!~**


	8. Chapter 8

**Um, hi, me again. No I haven't died, but it seems this fic has, so I'm going to attempt a 'revival', of sorts.**

**...I have no clue where these things come from, I really don't.**

**BUT! Some things before we start: This chapter is effing HUGE. Why? Because it's actually the compilation of a bunch of random odds and ends, all in an effort to tie up loose ends and attempt to make 'sense' of everything so far...if that's even possible. Being as I haven't updated this story in ages, and really feel I should do so (especially after seeing the trailer for DS3 and realizing this shit better get a move on)...yep, here goes. *crosses fingers***

"Alright, how's the session going?" Tiedemann asks as he siddles up alongside a small group of his staff, jotting notes on clipboards as they make their observations, as is the custom of so bland of characters as they.

"As good as they get around here," sighs one wearily. Tiedemann can only imagine.

Inside the viewing room, Patient 5 is curled up in a terrified ball, rocking himself back and forth and muttering something about...clowns.

"I didn't know you were afraid of clowns," Isabel raises an eyebrow as she watches her lover go through his current personal crisis.

"OF COURSE I'M AFRAID OF CLOWNS!" the scientist suddenly roars, not that she seems to notice. Or care.

"Hey, in his defense, clowns can be damn scary," one of the other viewing staff agrees, glancing over at Tiedemann.

"Especially the ones we keep in here," Tiedemann rolls his eyes before moving on.

Coming to the next session in progress, he notes that there _was _in fact a reason he'd stashed all those migraine pills in his pocket before he came down here; that and it's probably a good idea to just down them all right now. He's already come to terms with the fact the he's not lucky enough to OD...

"...Sir?" a researcher asks tentatively, rousing him from his thoughts. "You, kinda had this really far away look on your face there for a second. Is something wrong?"

"Yes, actually there is: can't a man daydream in this facility without suffering scrutiny from his underlings?" Tiedemann snaps.

"Uh-! ...No?"

"..." Turning instead to the rest of the small team, "So what've we got in here?"

"Patient Four is currently recovering the Eye Poke exam we just administered."

"Oh thank God," Tiedemann sighs with relief. Catching on to all the stares, "Um, I mean, 'And how is that going?'"

"Honestly, it's going quite well. The codes we extracted from him are amazing-"

"Does that mean we're almost done with him?" The Director sounds just a little _too _hopeful, somehow.

"Er, no. Not by a long shot-"

"Son of a bitch," Tiedemann hisses under his breath. The others choose to disregard that and instead fill him in on quite possibly the worst news of his life: Patient Four is what they consider to be of the 'purest' mindset; meaning, most unfourtunately, that he's pretty much the key component to their undertaking.

"Well," Tiedemann starts calmly, clasping his hands behind his back and glancing over one and all before him. "I truly thank you for making me hate my life worse than I ever even concieved possible. Now that I feel a spiraling depression looming just on my horizon, I think I'll call it a day." He promptly struts out of the facility, and of course no one dares say or do anything to try and stop him.

A month later and Tiedemann's now presiding over some other end of the department, aka-the people that _don't _deal with the patients, but rather handle the data provided them by the people that _do_. For the Director, being here is a reprieve. It's a shame these guys don't need looking over nearly as much as the others...

The procedures here were going very much as they should, although truth be told some of the security staff were getting a little wary of some of the scientists. Why? As he was informed, it seemed some of them were starting to have a 'change of heart'; in other words, they no longer believed in the research they were doing, much less the actual work. They were coming to the conclusion that the Marker was a 'bad' thing...

"Certainly can't have that kind of mindset setting in; we've come much too far and there is way too much at stake." Tiedemann shook his head. "I suppose the only thing to do here is-"

After explaining the neccesary protocols to averting what could be a small-time disaster, the EarthGov Director found his way back to his office, and his usual hefty tray of impending paperwork. Irked by the usual monotony of signing this and initialing that, he nonetheless plucked up his favorite pen and settled down to begin the task at hand-

And then he saw it. The small packet set alongside the In-Tray, set in just the kind of way that calls for one's immediate attention simply for how out of place it is. Scanning over it, he felt a grim satisfaction take hold in his gut, tightening it's grip all the more as his eyes drank in the printed words.

_Oooooh, this time I've got him..._

Patient Four had done something bizarre, yet again. This time he'd somehow managed to break out of his viewing room and run amok in the kitchens, and while yes, this was an error on the part of the viewing staff, Tiedemann saw it as a way to reduce the very sharp pain that arose in his ass nearly every time he went down to 'check up' on things. In other words, Clarke was taking the fall, and if Tiedemann got his way (which damned if he wouldn't), he was going to be taking this one hard. Damn hard.

According to the report, the CEC engineer had wound up down there after his attending doctor had gone off to the bathroom. Something that shouldn't have happened in the first place, but that's apparently what is to be expected when one employs individuals with highly irritable bowels. Anyway, once he'd gotten into the kitchens, all hell had broken loose. While most of the details were shaky at best, they all added up to some very strange maulings, including (but not limited to, by no means) one man being beaten to death with a pair of eggbeaters Patient Four had gotten hold of'. All in all, damages to both staff and the workplace as a whole were quite great, and no matter how hard anyone tried to argue it, Tiedemann was going to have his way: Isaac was to be put into stasis, indefinitely.

It wasn't the firing squad, sadly, but it was close enough to help him sleep easier at night.

Therefore, to Hans, the solution was a great deal. He'd finally be able to tour his own facility without that nagging dread of whatever the hell Patient Four might be up to under his unfoutunate watch.

For Isaac, well, the jury was out on that one.

Once he'd been put under, Isaac was left to the realm of his dreams, and considering the fact that dementia is an ailment of the mind, well...

_In his dreams..._

(Re)Enter the USG Ishimura, in all it's horrific glory. Once more he found himself inside the cavernous hell-hole, clutching Marty close and listening hard for the sounds of what-should-not-be-but-were-anyway...only to realize he's done this one too many times, and by now it's fucking old. Sighing irritably and lowering his weapon, he checks his objective locater and half-heartedly wanders off after it.

Somewhere along the lines, the Ishimura stopped being scary and instead became downright annoying. Same bloody halls, same creepy-ass 'transformed' staff...ugh. To Isaac, the charade was getting more than a little repetetive. To those that called this place 'home', however, it was about to be the exact opposite; their Master just came to pay them a visit.

"Really?" a slasher eagerly interrogates it's enhanced partner, poking him in his gushy guts relentlessly with one of it's arm blades as it's way of coersing more out of him. "Really? Really? Really? Really-?"

"YES REALLY!" the other one snaps loudly, causing the nag to quickly back down. "Now zip it!" Once silence takes hold again the enhanced slasher goes on to peer around the corner of one of the doorways. Sure enough-

"Holy Marker it IS him!" the less-intimidating of the two squeals before tearing around the corner in a frenzy. "MAAAAASSSSTTTEEEEEEEER-!"

BLAM!

"Can't say I didn't see that coming," the enhanced slasher sighs to itself, shaking it's head before ducking into the nearest vent so as to avoid the approaching Master. He's of the type that needs to be approached with care, after all. Great care.

They wouldn't have him any other way.

Back in the (real) Ishimura...

"Ow!" yelps one of the many of the slasher pack, having been roused out of it's 'thoughts' by- "The Master shot me!"

"Dumbass keep it down!" someone else snarls from the throng. "Sync your thoughts back up and quit being such a bitch!"

"But..." the former sniffles, before giving in and syncing back up with the masses.

(Meanwhile, upstairs and elsewhere...)

"Oh my GOD what the fuck was that?" shrieks (girlishly) a man by the name of Hendrick, startled by two things: some random noise that had seemingly come from well within the ship, and, oh merciful heavens-

"Oh...eheheh. J-Just, a r-r-roll of T-T-T.P-P...heh." He chortles nervously to himself as the disrupted roll rolls on by his boot.

However...

_Damn this is so easy it's BORING! _growls a slasher to itself, watching the man it was stalking from it's convient hiding spot well-within a darkened vent.

_I think it's kinda funny..._ a nearby lurker pursuing the same 'prey' giggles softly as both predators watch with rapt attention as the latter of those small sounds takes it's toll after having been heard by the target.

"D-D-DAMMIT that i-i-is IT! I'm g-g-getting the FUCK o-out of here! I-I mean it! No more! NO MORE!" And as both creatures watch, the man bolts out of the ship like a bat straight out of hell itself. Seeing this, the slasher hangs it's head in irritation.

_There_'_s a reason you fetal fucktards aren't entitled to an opinion, you know._

_...Huh? Hey, he'll be back tomorow, right? Right?_

_He better be..._

_Back inside Isaac's 'dreams'..._

"Hah! How'd ya like them apples?" the engineer congratulates himself on a job well-done; he'd neutralized that sucker with one shot, after all. Not bad for having roughly a split second's notice before you were bear-hugged by a rampaging side of human beef. Anyway, back on to more pressing matters. He had an objective that needed done, might as well get on it before-

Kssssht!

"Isaac! Where the hell are you?" a familiar male voice yells into Isaac's RIG. "I told you to get down here an hour ago!"

Before Isaac could respond, another person tapped in. "Hammond you still haven't told us about this 'Marker' yet! Quit changing the subject!"

"Augh for the love of- I told you, I don't know anything about any damned Marker or anything like that-!"

"LIAR!"

"Back off! I'm yelling at Isaac here! Now dammit lemme finish! ISAAC GET DOWN HERE-!"

"ARGH! Ok, Hammond, DAMN!" Isaac practically screams over the RIG, illiciting instant silence from both opposing ends. After a small time...

"...Kendra?"

"Yes, Hammond?"

"Did you hear that?"

"...Yes Hammond."

"I think someone's listening in on us. Isaac, be careful. I think there's a third party out here..." With that the RIG link went dead from both his cohorts, leaving him mildly confused. Shaking it off, he follows his waypoint toward the Tram, but not before stopping at the Store convieniently placed before him. Only, just a slight problem here...

"What the hell?" he says aloud as the store window comes down and shows him, well, _not_ what he wanted. He wanted to buy a damn gun, but there weren't any guns here! There were the usual holograms, except that now they were replaced with weird things he'd never seen before, and he was pretty sure one of these in particular was outdated...by a longshot. "Aw, who's been fucking with the damn Store?" he curses loudly. As if on cue-

"Wait a minute, how the hell did that get there?" someone voices over his RIG, someone whose voice he isn't familiar with...at all.

"Who the hell're you?" Isaac inquires, still holding the agitated edge to his voice.

"Why the hell does that matter?" the voice fires back. In the background he can hear what sounds like keys on a keyboard being tapped rapidly. "I'm working on this, is that alright with you?"

"Only if it fixes the Store," Isaac grumbles, watching the holograms fold back together as the Store shuts down for the moment.

"Yeah, yeah, it will," the mystery voice responds absentmindedly, still tapping away at keys that he can't see (since this is only a voice feed). "I don't know how that got there, I've been tweaking it as a prototype...for another fic..."

"A what?"

"Whoops, nevermind. I said nothing."

"What the hell is a 'fic'?"

"Something that really needs to stop saying 'hell', for starts."

"...That tells me nothing."

"Then you need to pay more attention." The voice sighs. "Right, here we go...I think."

Isaac taps into the Store again, and this time everything's as it should be. Before the person on the other end of the link leaves him, however, he's got one last question. "Why were you altering the Store in the first place?"

Now the voice takes on a somewhat devious tone. "Well, like I said, I got this idea for another fic-"

"There you go talking nonsense again-"

"Hey! Mind your business! *ahem* Anyway, I got an idea, so I was more or less setting up for it-"

"-And you needed the Store for it?"

"Obviously."

"...I don't want to know."

"Then stop asking. I've got better things to write anyway. Now buy your shit and begone with you!" The link goes offline, Isaac feels more lost than ever, and what's worse, before he even gets the chance to buy anything, a small white 'something' drops down onto the screen and then-

BOOM!

He gets thrown back into the far wall (with his classic howl of 'AAHHHRRRRRGH!') as whatever it was blows up in his face (and the Store somehow remains unscathed).

"I hate my life," he growls as he painfully drags himself up off the floor.

"Just get your ass on the Tram already." that weird voice comes over again.

"I want a restraining order from you."

"Mmm, I can see where you'd get that idea, yeah..."

One uneventful tram ride later...

"Isaac! Finally!" Hammond calls over, not even bothering to glance over from the hologram he's consulting as the door opens and Isaac bustles inside. "Listen, I don't know what happened back there on the RIGs-"

"Me neither. I think you two must've lost it." Isaac shakes his head. Hammond, however, suddenly goes rigid and turns slowly to face him, his expression one of complete and utter shock. "...What?"

"Well I'll be damned," Hammond breathes. "I can't believe it..."

"'Believe' what?"

"Congrats on the aquisition of vocal cords!" Hammond strides over and swats him jovially on the shoulder. "I figured I'd have to die to see, erm, _hear_ it, but wow! They sound good!"

"What in the-?"

The 'dream' suddenly changes; now he and Hammond are standing in the cafeteria, except in this instance it looks as it had before the necromorphs had taken over it. None of the blood, gore, and whatever that organic gunk was growing out of the floor, although outside it was still the same: the hallway beyond was overrun with it, just as he remembered it to be. Back in the cafeteria...

"Dammit woman! Would you cut that out?" one of the men at a nearby crowded table shouted over his hand of cards.

"Maybe someone should make better use of their cards then," the woman addressed chortled wryly.

"Are you insinuating that _I_ don't know how to use _my_ cards?" the first man growls.

"Ben, do calm down, it _is_ just a game after all..." another man at the table chides the first.

"_HOARDER!" _the man assumed to be 'Ben' barks, pointing accusingly at the woman with his free hand. She just stares at him until his breathing becomes even again.

"...Done yet?"

"Yes, yes, I suppose." 'Ben' waves her off. "By all means, feel free to continue your dastardly cheating."

"It's not cheating-"

"It's cheating if the Captain says it's cheating!"

"This is a daily occurence around here, don't worry about it." Hammond leans over to Isaac. "Just gotta wait a minute..."

Two hours later...

"-Uno!"

"This is BULLSHIT!" the man named 'Ben' roars, leaping from his seat in a rage, his suddenly discarded cards fluttering from his hands.

"Suck it up, Mathius. For God's-"

"-'Altman's'-" chimes in the guy next to Mathius.

"-sake, this is only the fifty-sixth time you've lost. You outta be used to it by n-oh." She stops midsentence as she locks eyes with Isaac. "Well, isn't this a surprise. I thought you'd never die."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Isaac growls at her, causing her face to drop almost instantly.

"...Whoa."

"I know, right? That's what I was thinking!" Hammond adds.

"But, I thought he was always a mute?" Kendra still seems to be drawing a blank at that one.

"Same here. I don't know what they did to him-"

"'Ay! 'Hell's going on over here?" the man known as 'Ben' bustles up to the three now, glaring especially at Kendra before rounding on the other two as well. "Who's this?" he asks pointedly in regard to Isaac.

"That would be-" Hammond starts, before 'Ben' seems to figure it out all on his own.

"AH! I know! You must be that new coffee boy I sent for! Excellent timing, chap!" he suddenly grabs and shakes Isaac's hand before Isaac can really 'grasp' what's going on. "My other one's been looking a little 'under the weather', lately..."

He points out what Isaac recognizes as an exploder-type necromorph behind the bar, where it stands eyeing them all, twitching and groaning to itself.

"Geez man! Why didn't you put him down yet?" Isaac's about to, but 'Ben' cuffs him before he can quite get off the shot.

"Hold it a minute, there, lad! He's still got one or two good cups left in him yet!" To emphasize his point, he yells to the exploder, "Francis! Fix your replacement a cup of Joe!"

The exploder makes some kind of excited -noise- and hurriedly sets to work, which surely must be a task in itself on account of it's 'much altered' anatomy and all-over bodily re-configuration. Isaac decides it best not to watch that painful display and instead turns to the small congregation he's sadly set up with.

"Right, so uh, who're you again?" he asks of Mathius.

"Ugh, figures. Nobody seems to respect authority anymore." he sighs. "I, am Captain Benjamin Mathius-"

"You mean you 'were'-" sniggers Kendra.

"I still am, curse it all!" Mathius barks at her, causing her to break out into a hard bout of laughter that sounds a lot more condescending than it should have. Either that or it's just Isaac's overwhelming hatred of her telling him it is. Both seem like pretty feasable possibilties...

"Ah, Mr. Clarke!" the man Isaac now recognizes as Dr. Kyne rises from his seat to join the standing party, offering a hand. "Good to see you again, although admittedly maybe not under the current circumstances-"

"Er-" Isaac doesn't know what to say as he shakes the dead man's hand.

"He's not dead." Hammond interjects.

"-Yet," Kendra sniggers low under her breath.

"Oh! Well then, good to see you all the same!"

"Um, yeah...whatever you say..."

Isaac is sparred having to say anything more by a sudden gutteral, clicking 'Raaaoooowwwwllll' at his side. Crying out in sudden (and understandable) panic, he throws himself backward as the others all stare at him, including Francis, who only wanted to offer him his freshly prepared drink.

"Francis, you have _got_ to stop making those Altman-awful fucking noises," Mathius shakes his head. "One of these days you're going to give someone a damn stroke, I swear..."

_With any luck, it'll be you._ The necromorphic Francis snarls mentally before turning again to his extremely-shaken (and now embarrased to boot) Master with an 'apologetic', erm, noise.

"Uh, thanks," Isaac warily takes the offered drink, inwardly resigning himself not to touch it even if hell really _does_ freeze over. Francis bows -and Isaac cringes- before taking his leave and hobbling off back behind the bar.

"That there'll put hair on your chest, that will!" Mathius announces proudly. After seeing the awkward expression on the engineer's face, however; "Oh, what? You don't believe me?"

Before anyone can even think to react, Mathius tears open his own shirt to reveal his Austin Powers/Burt Reynolds-esc chest. "Behold!"

"Urgh!" Kendra gripes in disgust. "Dammit Ben put it away! There's animal's nesting in there!"

"I...did not, need to know that..." Hammond drawls blankly, unable to tear his eyes away from the spectacle even though he very much wants to. Beside him, Kyne's about the same.

"...Nor, did I..."

Some time later and the gang are now seated around the bar, talking about all manner of random subjects. Currently, Isaac and Kendra are in a heated arguement; care to guess about what?

"Kendra, how could you!" Hammond snaps as Isaac finishes relaying to him the details of her betrayal.

"'How could I' what?"

"Y-You evil bitch, you made ME out to be the bad guy!" Hammond yelps, hurt at the remembrance. "People probably hated me right up until the end! People I don't even KNOW, damn you!"

As the arguement only gets worse, no one seems to notice the small audience peering in at them all.

"His head component must be so proud," the Divider breathes in awe.

"You dunce, he doesn't have a head component!" another leaper yowls at him.

"Piss off, of course he does! Especially if the rest of his components are anything like mine!" -To which the conjoined Components all wail 'Awwwl!' as one...before promptly detatching from their leader.

"OH you miserable-!"

"Eeeeennnnyaaaaah!" the free-wandering pieces cackle as they quickly disperse around the room.

"-So glad I'm not made of Components," a slasher shakes it's head.

"-DON'T RUB IT IN!" The Head screams as it scrambles about trying to chase down it's cohorts.

As that scene plays out 'beyond the looking glass', inside the cafeteria the battle still rages.

"I say we make her meet Francis' in-laws!" Mathius offers, much to the confusion of his audience. "Well, I mean, if they look anything like he does..."

"Urrrgh!" Francis barks suddenly, seemingly angered by the remark.

"Uh-oh, looks like you pissed off the coffee-boy," Kendra taunts. "Now you've done it-"

"Oh my God-!" Isaac yelps, suddenly diving for cover. Before anyone else can truly catch on...

_Insult MY in-laws will you! _Francis challenges mentally, (which you can only imagine how that came out physically) drawing up his 'good' arm before slamming it down, effectively engulfing the entire room in the sickly explosion-

-and then there was nothing at all.

_Ah, what the hell? _He found himself thinking as he tried to really think at all.

"Oh! There you are, Mr. Clarke! Thought I'd lost you for a moment there!" A jovial voice seemed to emanate to him from the void.

_...Er, what?_

The voice seemed lapsed into an odd sort of silence before it's owner finally came back around, however sounding rather distracted. "Ah, yes of course, I forgot to tell him...oh, yes, well that's always- yes. Got to stop jumping ahead of things like that, people will tend to get lost-"

_Alright, seriously? What the fuck're you on about right now?_

"Sorry, sorry! Very sorry about that! Was talking to Amelia, completely forgot about you for a moment there-"

_Ugh. Kyne you creepy, jittery bastard-_

"Jittery? Do I sound jittery? I'm not 'jittery'- H-HEY! Amelia, how could you?"

_She agrees with me, doesn't she?_

Kyne's resounding voice suddenly turns just a tad icy. "Never you mind, Mr. Clarke. Sometimes Amelia has her moments...but ah, well. Alright now, where were we again?"

_I have not one fucking clue. _

"OH! Yes, yes yes yes yes YES, THAT'S where we left off!"

_...?_

And then comes the simple answer:

"-We're in your head, and I'm going to sum things up for, erm, well, let's just say...oh...you and everyone else."

_..._

_..._

_...What?_

"Allow me to explain. *ahem* By the Twenty-Fifth Century, Earth's resources were ravaged. 

Consumed.

Exhausted."

_Why does that sound like some really scripted bullshit right there?_

"Because in all honesty that's pretty much what it amounts to. Oh, and I'm also going to be showing you some random images to go with my story."

_Wait, what-? _

But suddenly said 'images' appear right before his mind's eyes (you've seen the cut-scene, have you not? Oh please don't make me describe it, I know it's considered 'lazy' but...but..)

_Whoa hell!_

"I know. It's odd. But do try and bear with me, please, this won't take very-"

_-Hell with that! Do you SEE this picture quality? I mean DAMN-!_

"Wait, what?"

But the engineer goes on, _It's like I got HD in my frikkin MIND! And it's even better than that shit they sell in the Stores!_

"...Ooooooo,kay?"

And so it goes, what with Kyne's summing up of the events of 'Game One'-

_Wait, did you just say 'Game'?_

...No.

_"No, you did! See, I've got subtitles too, and they clearly said-_

-Nothing! They said nothing but that this chapter is over! So just mind your business and, um, what not! Yeah!

"You people have such issues..."

Kyne?

"Yes?"

Narrate your meager part and begone already.

"Ugh...fine. So this is the role I'm left to..."

_Psh, oh yeah? Have you seen mine? I mean, look at this shit. You'd think I was insane or something!_

"..."

...

And yet...

A cacophony of enraged 'voices' rages throughout the cargo hold as the multitude of necromorphs howl out their frustrations at one certain 'former coffee-boy's outbreak that sadly cost all of them their syncing with their beloved Master. As you can only imagine:

This. Means. War.

-Thank Altman the Ishimura's secretly assigned 'clean-up crew' have all gone home for the night, as one can only imagine what it sounds like in there.

And so time passes, but as is the way of dreams, they somehow manage to span greater lengths of time in actuality than they seem to. By that meaning, Isaac's been out a lot longer than has been insinuated. Try by, oh, round about three YEARS.

But now...

"Isaac? Isaac, can you hear me?" An unfamiliar male voice asks in a low, urgent tone, as a faint clicking sound is heard, one not unlike the rapid snapping of fingers.

"Oh dear. Well, it seems our time together has run it's course, Mr. Clarke." Kyne chortled from well within the realm of his subconscious.

But, wait... His mind felt heavy, and oddly, split...

Had he been sleeping? Had this all, in fact, been...?

_H-Hey! What the-?_

"-For the Marker, changes all." Kyne's voice echoed ominously, before light exploded painfully before his very eyes, and the darkness was no more.

At least, in one aspect.

**~For the most part, keep in mind that parts of this were supposed to be confusing and what not; I was experimenting with making you as the reader feel just as 'lost' as Isaac, who sadly has to put up with this bull. And I inserted myself for, really, no real reason at all; kind of like how 'they' made the animated movies of the game for *cough* no real reason either (at least that's my opinion).**

**I also hinted at another fic more as an attempt to spur myself into FINALLY putting an idea I've had for ages into actual writing. Maybe arrousing possible interest might help too. Hey, who knows.**

**Um, yeah, from there I dunno...but thank Altman! No more 'facility' scenes! -I apologize for the repetition there. And these lengthy notes. Does anyone even read these? Hmm...**


	9. Chapter 9

Three years have now passed since he was rescued from the executive shuttle. Three whole years. And he can't remember a single thing.

**XXXXXX**

It's been three years since they followed the Master. Three long years since they joined him. Three years of running amok in secret, but now the Marker's calling, and it's time once more for them to come out to play.

**XXXXXX**

A nightmare is about to befall the Sprawl.

And it will be crazy.

**XXXXXX**

"Holy shit it's Isaac Clarke!" squeals a strange man as said Isaac struggles to wake up. "Uh, *coughs loudly* I mean, 'I have him," he changes his tone as he radios over to:

"Right...good work Franco," a female voice responds. "Just be careful, he's been out a long time."

"What the-where am I?" Isaac starts, just barely coming around.

"About that..." Franco says. He fishes around in a pocket a moment, then curses loudly. "Shit! I can't find my cue card!"

"What?" Isaac's now even more seriously confused.

"Ah well, don't worry about it. All's I know is some serious shit is going on, and, and..." the man's voice turns back to it's higher pitch, "-and I am just SUCH a huge fan! Will you sign my-UGH!"

"Wait, how do you-WHOA!" Isaac cries as something jabs through Franco's chest, barely missing his (Isaac's) nose. A second later a fairly large, bat-like (and horribly familiar) creature draws itself further up his back and slams it's proboscis deep into his forehead before dashing up into the ceiling vents above. As that poor prick turns into a vulgar depiction of a living nightmare right before his eyes, the 'beast' draws itself closer and roars in his face, which oddly conjures up this thought for our, erm, 'hero'.

"Oh hell no!" Isaac head-butts him away. "I just met you!" Now sobered up from that harrowing incidentt, Isaac turns to the doorway to run, only to see the chaos of the hallways. Slashers are everywhere, and as the new one he just knocked down begins to get back up, the same woman that was talking to Franco now calls for him to run.

"No shit bitch!" he yells as he bolts down the hall, trying not to think about how the hell he'll get up should he fall being as he's still in a straightjacket.

As Isaac's running the very real gauntlet, the slashers that have just come into being pursue him, but not all for the same reason. There are those that simply want to hack him to shreds, and then there are those that, well...

* * *

><p>"It's the Master!" shouts one, pointing a claw at the sprinting man.<p>

"Really?!" cries another, giving chase with a roar. "Wait, Master! I wish to join you!"

Still more perk up at the thought of joining their 'Master', and thus chase him down in a frenzy that would make even someone like the veteran Clarke wet themselves in terror. Of course, there's already others of the 'non-believer' type that are after him like all manner of hell, but that kind of behavior just won't stand with the 'truly devout'.

"Not on your life, swine!" roars yet another slasher as it pounces on one of Isaac's unruly pursuers, tearing it apart with the same brutal ferocity that all slashers are known for. "NO ONE harms the Master!"

"Get 'em, Marty!" shrieks one of the infectors as it's proboscis pierces yet another unfourtunate skull. "Show those heathens who's boss!"

* * *

><p><em>Fuck!<em> He just hit a dead end. Wheeling around, he can already see their horrible shadows across the walls, and knows he'll be lucky to cross to the other door without being attacked. Which, in his frantic and reeling mind, brings up another question: _How the hell can I open a door with a straightjacket on? _

Eh, but somehow it works so best not question it lest it stop and truly fuck him over.

He dives across the way to an open door, _the_ open door, passing yet another slasher as it stands off to his side. It's arms open wide and it bellows to the ceiling, and Isaac remembers all too well that this is exactly the kind of stance these things take when they're about to grab him. Diving out of its reach and sprinting away as best he can, he can hear the others tearing after him. _Just a little bit further-come on!_ His breath's starting to burn in his throat. There has to be somewhere he can get to-_There! _There's a door just ahead that's about to close. _If I can get through that I should be clear! _With everything he has, he lunges through it, only to be brought crashing down by a slasher that latched onto his leg. It swings an arm and its blade jabs into his side, before the door slams shut and annihilates it. Panting and shaking, a very rattled (and now wounded) Isaac Clarke manages to push himself up, now more acutely aware of his deteriorated health.

On the other side of the door...

* * *

><p>"Awwl," the slasher that tried to grab Isaac pouts, hanging it's head. "I only wanted a hug...OW!"<p>

"What the hell were you thinking?!" snaps another of the newly bred, cuffing the former.

"I was thinking that I could use some love right about now!" it howls out, snarling at the latter.

"Ugh, that's what I get for infecting the emotionally disturbed," sighs a prowling infector on its way past those two. The rest of the mob (fresh from having slaughtered those that would do harm to their 'Master') all come to a halt before them as well, clogging up the whole hall.

"What was the problem now?" asks one of the multitude. The other two think a moment, then:

"He hit me." the slasher with the hug-dependency issue points.

"Hey!" the one that hit him barks, sounding a little embarrassed. "He-He-! It stutters as one of the others tuts him.

"Tch, tch...that's not very nice y'know." someone scolds, and the addressed hangs it's head for being told off, having forgotten why it was mad at that first one to begin with.

"Now say you're sorry."

"Aw, man..." It sighs. "Fine, I'm _sorry..._"

"Hug?" the clingy slasher inquires brightly.

"What the-no! I said I was sorry now leave me alone!"

"Awww..."

* * *

><p><em>"It's Clarke, take him down!" <em>shouts a man in full combat-RIG, wheeling around to open fire with his pulse rifle. Caught off-guard by the sudden unexpected assault, Isaac makes to duck behind some manner of hospital junk when his attacker gives a yelp and vanishes up into the ceiling, in a way that by no means looks, 'healthy'. His partner runs over and aims his gun into the gaping hole his buddy just disappeared in, when a long, fleshy-something catches him in the chest and hoists him up as well. Isaac, having just bore witness to that crazy shit, is hesitant to go past, but after a few minutes he realizes it's probably safer to walk by then just stand still. Certainly wouldn't want to present an open target...

* * *

><p><em>Shooting at the Master is a frowned upon practice, my friend... <em>the necromorph in the ceiling forces it's thoughts into the mind of the hapless second man it caught as it proceeds to 'take care of business'. Just as it sees it's Master going past, it decides to offer him a gift, in the form of:

* * *

><p>"Oh my GOD that is fucked up!" Isaac yelps loudly as the bloodied torso of a man splats on the floor beside him on his way past. "Seriously, WHY must my every waking moment be filled with the kind of shit that only a surgeon should see?! I'm an engineer for fuck sakes!" he gripes as he moves off.<p>

* * *

><p><em>He liked it,<em> thinks the necromorph still hidden in the ceiling ventilation, pleased with itself.


	10. Chapter 10

The next room Isaac enters is a disheveled looking work room of sorts. Papers and the like are strewn about haphazardly, but the surviving computers on some of the desks are still showing-

"WHOA! They have Law and Order on here!" Isaac exclaims as he nears the closest monitor to him. "And hey! I haven't seen this one! Oh shit yes!" Conveniently forgetting his pains for a moment, he stands transfixed as on-screen a loop of Stross's last interrogation plays out.

_"-Eye seems to be looking much better today, yes? Don't you think?"_ One (as we know) Doctor Foster asks of the nervous, twitching patient seated before him.

"I don't remember this episode..." Isaac murmurs, squinting at the screen.

_"I-It hurts, still hurts..."_ Stross's stressful voice tappers out as Foster talks blandly over his complaints.

_"Yes, I have you scheduled for another session here tomorrow-" _

_"Er, no, no I don't think I'm ready, I don't think I can take another session, I don't-_

_"There, first thing tomorrow. Now let's talk about what you saw today. C'mon, Stross, help me out-"_

"Ah screw this," Isaac says boredly, making his way past the first monitor and winding through the mess toward the door out. Before leaving he comes to one last monitor, showing the end of the scene playing out between those two. Stopping only for a second to watch the last moments before the loop resets, Isaac is left shaking his head in distaste.

"No wonder this clip never left the editing office..."

The next door he comes to leads him down an eerily red-lit hallway, the side 'windows' revealing panels and internal circuitry that the engineer finds less than interesting. What he needs right now is a way out...preferably minus the straightjacket, sooner or later. Overhead a loop recording of Tiedmann ordering a clean-up of the facility is heard again.

"No shit this isn't a drill," Isaac mutters to himself as he passes through the next door, to which he's met with the sight of a lone figure leaned against the glass of the side wall, staring down at the wreckage of what was once an observation room he himself had been in many times passed (though of course, he knows nothing of this).

"Er..." Isaac now pauses, unsure as to what his next move should be. From what he's seen so far, the necromorphs are on the rise, and every room he's yet passed through has been a scene of heightened discord. From his time spent within the confines of the great USG Ishimura, the signs tell him this man is most likely highly unstable. And judging said man's stance and creepy humorless chuckling to himself, the signs are correct.

He's also holding a wicked-looking shard of glass.

_...Yup, he's fried. _ Isaac takes mental note as he tries to think up an escape plan. _Ok, I'm in a straightjacket. There's a crazy, armed Marker-junkie guarding the door. This hall isn't very wide, sooooo..._

A full minute of fruitless planning later and Isaac's wishing Pi were here. Pi might have had a good play somewhere in him.

_Damned Pi and his shenaniganry...maybe I should just tackle this fuck-_

_"That's a horrible plan, love." _a snide chuckle is heard -NOT from said nutter before him.

Isaac's expression turns grim(-er) and his eyes narrow darkly. _"Never miss a trick, do you?"_

_"Of course not Isaac." Nicole's voice chides brightly. "Why didn't you tell me you were up?"_

_"Lassie, I haven't even been conscious a full twenty minutes and you're on me already? Get some hobbies in your afterlife! Geez!" _

Angered by the fact that Nicole is -as usual- haunting the back of his brain, Isaac forgets all about his 'stealth' plans and just straight-on stalks toward the door, ignoring both the angry fog presumably yelling at him somewhere in his subconscious and-

"AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!" he shrieks as the hall spins in a whirl and he realizes he's just been grabbed by guess-who.

"Oh, that's you all right. Hehe, could tell by that pre-pubescent girly screaming, hehehehe..." The man's glassy eyes glitter wildly as he stares hard at Isaac, and the engineer is made uncomfortably aware that the glass shard he'd seen in the man's hand earlier is now pressed firmly against his throat. And now that he's about nose to nose with this guy...

"Er, um...don't I know you?" he asks tentatively.

"Ermhm, Patient Four, how, 'fondly', I remember you..." his voice trails off again to more of that eerie laughter.

"Y-Yeah, from Law and Order, right?"

"Wha-?" At first the Doctor stares, but quickly -too quickly- regains himself. "Patient Four, heheh, Tiedmann said...all the key subjects...need to be eliminated-"

"Hey whoa-!" Isaac yelps, but Foster overrides his protest.

"-terminated-"

"Listen to me, man," Isaac starts again, trying not to panic, but Foster's laughing gets louder and he cuts in again with, "What's one more?"

"What's one more!" he presses hotly, his face just inches from Isaac's.

"-The end of your acting career?" Isaac...just, throws out there. He doesn't know. This guys' nuts. Anything's worth a try at this point.

"Huh? Ugh, Lord, even after all those months in stasis..." Foster sighs irritably, hanging his head, before the chortle at the back of his throat rises up once more. "It's all right, hmhm, it doesn't matter, none of it actually _matters_..."

"Listen to me-" Isaac starts.

"-Will it matter?" Foster's focus suddenly snaps back, and the glass blade gets that much tighter against his throat.

"-Just listen-"

"**-Will it matter?**" Foster snarls.

"-Listen to me!" Isaac screams back, trying to get his assailant's attention.

Surprisingly, it works.

Isaac can't deny his fear now; try as he may to suppress it he can still hear the waver in his own voice. Still, he's got to try: it's currently his only option. "Listen, we can both get out of here, alright? Just, just cut me out of this straightjacket-"

"No one's getting out of here alive." Foster says firmly. "No one."

_"Oh God, no-!" _a voice cries out somewhere in the void of the engineer's brain, and under these circumstances he's not entirely sure if it was the sound of his thoughts or...hers. Then again, does it matter?

"Don't do this," reduced to pleading, Isaac shakes his head repeatedly and tries to brace himself as the deranged maniac lowers the blade toward his abdomen. "Please...?"

"'My acting career'," Foster scoffs under his breath, before thrusting the blade hard, straight...!

-Through the straps of the straightjacket.

"Jesus Christ man!" Isaac yelps shrilly upon being freed, retreating into the small recess where there is to be seen a lone yellow locker, standing out in stark contrast to the overall 'dark' of the room in general. "You...you..."

"I have waited, so long..." Foster sniggers grimly, eyes fixed on the fear still in Isaac's. "It felt, heheh, so good...the look on your face..."

"Wait...what?" Now Isaac's confused. _The hell...? _

"They won't let me kill you, but that...that'll do." Foster murmurs, before raising his voice and saying calmly, "There's no escaping what I've done."

"-The fuck-?

"Your rig is red."

"Wha-?"

"It's red."

"Yeah, I know, but what did you say-?"

"IT'S RED!" Foster barks randomly.

"SWEAR TO ME!" Isaac counters even louder and -more- randomly.

Foster looks a little taken aback by this. A moment's ever-more-awkward silence later...

"...It's red."

"Jeezes..."

"There's a health pack and a flashlight in that wall locker over there." Foster points out. "Take 'em. I'm not going to be needing them any more..."

The engineer sighs heavily and quickly loots the locker, treating his previous injuries and grabbing up the flashlight. Just as he turns to 'thank' his attacker-turned-assist, however, the man takes the glass shard to his own throat.

"Isaac." he states in a too-calm tone of finality. "We're all gonna burn for what we did to you."

Before Isaac can even think to react, the man drives the weapon in deep and slits his own throat. Blood sprays from the fresh incision, and as the man drops to the floor, coughing and choking up the last remains of his life...Isaac cocks an eyebrow nonchalantly.

...and before the doctor finally succumbs to his own demise, Patient Four drops down to one knee in front of him, and neatly boxes him, hard, in the eye. A strange expression, akin to deja vu, comes to the other's face as Isaac brandishes a finger and says flatly, "That. Was for Pi."

With that he simply takes his leave.

A little ways ahead and his RIG's comm flashes a screen to him. "Clarke?" the woman depicted asks in a rush. "Isaac Clarke? Is that you?"

"Ugh, YES Nic-ew **God** what did you do with your hair?" Isaac screws up his face as he takes in the new look.

"Wha-Who?"

"-Not now scary broad, I'm sure it's lovely on my Credits Card-" Isaac clicks off the screen, only for it to instantly re-appear, much to his dismay.

"-You're suffering from a unique form of dementia Isaac, something you contracted on Aegis 7! It's killing you!"

"Yes I know. And it will go away, as soon as you do. " he says sarcastically, dispelling the screen again.

It comes back just as fast. "Just who the living hell do you think I am?" the woman on-screen chastises hotly.

"Nicole-" Isaac grits his teeth, but-

"Try Daina, smart ass."

"-Wait, who?"

"Exactly."

"Wait, so you're...NOT...Nicole?" Now giving the woman on screen his full attention, he's surprised -and somewhat embarrassed- to see that no, that's not Nicole.

"No!"

He's still leery, though. Nicole can be a tricky one, after all. For all he knows she might have learned the art of 'possession' in Marker Hell. "Then how do you know all this about me?"

"It's obvious." Daina responds curtly, trying hard not to lose patience with her new 'friend'.

"Do tell."

"Look, Isaac, your dementia WILL kill you. But if you can reach me here, I can treat you and get you to safety."

"What color are my underwear?" Isaac suddenly blurts out accusingly.

"Wha-? How should I know? White?" Daina raises an eyebrow.

"Hmm...good answer, 'Daina'." Clarke's eyes narrow suspiciously. "Why should I trust you?"

"Because I'm not the one shooting at you!" She snaps, flaring up again. Idiocy can do that to a person.

"Neither was the LAST bitch that was supposedly 'helping' me! -Er, well, not 'till the end anyway...but still!"

"Ugh, just follow the route I'm sending you." With that the screen finally goes off, this time not because of Isaac.

"Fuck..." Isaac gripes upon entering the elevator as, sure enough, he's got a waypoint.

Meanwhile, called to arms and thus hot on their Master's tail...a small collective of necromorphs burst into the room the engineer just left, only to find the deceased Foster in their wake. One is just about to yowl out something when-

"-Oof!"

"Quiet!" the other slasher hisses mentally, turning it's twitching neck from side to side the way a dog would when listening intently for something. "The Master...is just beyond this door..."

"So why aren't we joining him?" the silenced slasher inquires of it's paranoid kin. "If he's literally right there?"

"You idiot! This sort of thing must be handled with great care! And sensitivity!"

"-That and look what he did to this poor slob." The infector tagging along points out, gesturing toward the dead guy. "Seriously, that wench underestimates our Master me thinks..."

"...'think I vaguely recall this one..." The first slasher peers intently at him. "Isn't this-?"

"-Ask him in a minute, hold on." The infector hastily bustles over, straddles the man, and sets to work before either of the other two can do/say anything further. Not long afterward...

"What the- oh motherFUCK me!" re-animated Foster-morph roars as the infector bounces back and skitters behind the original slasher pair.

"Whadda ya think?" it asks in passing. The other two stare, scrutinizing.

"Erm..."

"I dunno..."

"Ask him the Important Question!"

So the leader of this tiny unit does just that, by pointing one long blade in the newest necro's face and barking (mentally): "You of the newly bred! Do you accept the Master as the One Being to bring us to True and glorious Convergence?"

"What?" Our former doctor is still having a hard time coming to grips with being newly 'alive', albeit now a slasher, let alone joining a new 'religion'.

"Answer now, heathen! We don't much recognize 'patience' as a 'virtue'."

"S-Sure, sure fine! But...what the hell...I'm, I thought I was-?"

"'Dead'?" the other three chime in.

"Yes?"

"Join the crowd."

"So...this is my punishment. I guess this is one way...so, explain to me this 'Master' of yours?"

So they tell him. And as they do, memories from a life not-so-long passed come creeping back...

"You have to be kidding me." Foster-morph's jaw drops (more) in horror.

"No?"

"...Screw this."

The other three necromorphs watch as the fresh slasher neatly rips it's own head off. It takes all of a grueling thirty seconds but nonetheless the job is done.

"Er...never seen that before..." One slasher scratches a blade on it's head, making a vulgar 'metal on bone' scraping sound in the process.

"So...who was he again?" it's cohort remarks.

"Beats me. Let's go back and see how everyone else is coming along. Dave says he's got a new plan to get the Master to come around to accepting us!"

"Damn! Dave's on a roll here!" The trio eagerly troop back out the way they came, conveniently unaware that, from the floor (once again) a now-headless slasher waves an arm feebly in the air, in an attempt to flag them back.

**~IT LIVES! **

**So very, VERY sorry I took so long to update! I kinda rushed this chapter a bit, hope you like it though!**

**-Also, thank you guys for reading, reviewing and the like. You guys are the best! ^^~**


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